Projects worth checking out at Young Scientist exhibition

Two students have developed ways of getting edible protein from single-celled organisms and another has come up with a way to take dangerous pathogens out of drinking water by first moving it through plants.

These are just two of the 550 interesting and sometimes amazing projects on display at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition under way at the RDS in Dublin.

The exhibition opens to the public at 9.30am on Thursday morning, January 8th. Almost 1,200 students are taking part.

If you see only a few projects, give these a try:

Single-celled organisms could be grown in space and refined into pastes to provide a fresh and nutritious food supply for astronauts on the way to Mars, say Eibhlís Myers and Anna Burns from Cork (stand 4405);

Clostridium can be filtered safely out of water supplies by sending the water through plants first, says Erika Dunne from Wicklow (stand 4204);

Zainab Baker and Aoife O’Driscoll from Cork have developed a smoke detector for the deaf by converting the sound into a physical sensation to alert the person (stand 3411);

Helping people with memory loss to cope better using an electronic device to assist independent living, work by Christopher Carragher in Monaghan (stand 3302).