Crystal structures and brown dwarfs go under the microscope

TWO groups of Transition Year students from Ardscoil Rís are vying for glory at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition.

The first group's project is ‘Inner Strength:’ An investigation of crystal structures and how they scale’ and is being researched by Daniel Meehan, Joseph Kehoe and Kevin Walsh.

Daniel said they want to see if crystal structures can be scaled and they're currently doing tests on them to see their overall strength to see how strong they could be and if they can work in the real world for construction.

This could help in making stronger ropes for bridges. Daniel was inspired by the collapse of the Baltimore Bridge, USA.

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Kevin added that they designed the crystal structure of three of the strongest materials, diamond, graphene, and titanium. “With the help of a friend we 3-D printed those models and now we're going to test on those models using weight compressive and tensile tests,” he explained.

The second project, ‘Failed stars or hidden opportunities? An investigation into the likelihood of brown dwarfs supporting life within their orbits’ is being undertaken by Brandon O’Toole, Ronan McGrath and Peter Fry.

Ronan explained: “We're trying to see if a planet orbiting a brown dwarf could theoretically inhabit life if the conditions were right, such as having an atmosphere, hydrogen, and the brown dwarf emitting enough heat for it to be warm enough to support life.”

Peter said the most interesting fact was brown dwarfs are like failed stars and as a result don't emit much heat.