iCRAG are delighted to announce the winners of this year’s National Crystal Growing Competition in collaboration with SSPC.
The National Crystal Growing Competition challenged participants to grow crystals using ingredients readily available in the home, pharmacies, and hardware stores. This year, the competition was specially designed for parents struggling to find appropriate activities for home-school science lessons during this period of school closure. Judges were overwhelmed by the number and quality of the entries, everyone that took part should be incredibly proud of their hard work.
The winning entries are:
Primary school
1st place – Sam Casey (Willow Park Junior School, Dublin)
2nd Place – Anshuman Tambde (St Colmcilles, Dublin)
3rd Place – Evan Kelly (Lisheenkyle National School, Co. Galway)
(Left to right): Sam Casey, Anshuman Tambde, Evan Kelly
Secondary school
1st Place – Eoin Comerford (Ard Scoil na Mara, Waterford)
2nd Place – Alex Aleksic (School Mhuire Gan Smal, Cork)
3rd Place – Jack Casey (Willow Park Secondary School, Dublin)
The aim of the competition is to have fun with science and also inspire young minds to explore careers in the field. We hope that everyone that took part enjoyed creating their crystals and will take part again next year. We are looking forward to organising talks from iCRAG and SSPC researchers to the classes of the winning pupils!
The competition originated in 2014 with the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) Crystal growing competition, as part of the celebrations for the International Year of Crystallography. It has since grown from strength to strength and is a great addition to the many SFI outreach programmes hosted in Ireland.
iCRAG is hosted at the University College Dublin and SSPC at the University of Limerick, both working with a host of partners.