What does it take to be a research scientist? Sevenoaks School is a member of an organisation called Institute for Research in Schools which develops established authentic research projects that students can take part in while at school. Students volunteer and work either in a club or independently, working on an IRIS project or one of their choosing.
Our IRIS projects this year included Big Data ATLAS where students learn to code in Python and analyse some of the data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. This is a project being run in collaboration with the University of Oxford. Another project is Cosmic mining is a project about analysing data from the Spitzer telescope to find interesting astronomical objects for the James Webb telescope to look at. Students have also worked on Future Flight, working with the hydrogen flight company Zero Avia to retrofit a Boeing 737 with a hydrogen-electric powertrain. Last year, students started looking at DNA origami which uses a technique inspired by the Japanese art of paper folding to create nano-structures.
Unfortunately due to the extreme weather, the IRIS conference was cancelled this year. Student work was instead celebrated on Founder’s Day.
‘Comparing the Z0 Boson Invariant Mass for Two Single Z0 Boson Decay Pathways’ by Alina, L6
‘Finding the Invariant Mass of the Z0 Boson’ by Pendar, Arthur and Thomas, L6
‘Earth Observation – How is climate change impacting malaria outbreaks in Madagascar’ by Lily and Mila, Y10
‘Future Flight – How cost-effectively can Hydrogen be stored on a Boeing 737?’ by Kian and Sean, Y9
‘Can we design a protein that selectively induces apoptosis only in tumor cells by expliting the acidic microenvironment?’ by Mya, Alyza, Bryan and David, Y10
‘Nature, choice or both? Is variation in the ACE gene associated with differences in athletic performances (endurance-oriented or power-oriented)?’ by Lolita, Georgina, Sophia and Lena, Y9
‘Modelling temperature with Ornstein-Uhlenbeck Process’ by Nicholas, L6
‘Future Flight – How safely and efficiently can hydrogen be stored on a Boeing 737?’ by Henry and Rose, Y9
