Year 10 pupil speaks at Young Scientists Journal Conference

31 Mar 2014

Last Wednesday, Pratap Singh from Year 10 represented the School at the inaugural Young Scientists Journal Conference held at The King’s School, Canterbury.

Keynote speakers included Sir Harry Kroto (winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996) and Professor Averil MacDonald (winner of the IoP Bragg Medal in 1999). There were also various workshops on science communication and how journalism is adapting in response to change in the 21st Century. Several young scientists also had the chance to present scientific projects that they have been working on. To be able to do this, Pratap had to submit an abstract and present his work on a poster: he took the opportunity to take his Higher Project Qualification (HPQ) project along. He was adjudged to be one of the top few presenters and was given the chance to talk to an audience of hundreds of people, many of them eminent scientists and teachers.

Following his presentation Pratap was selected as one of the two winners ˗ a tremendous achievement. His project involved him making a ‘cosmic ray detector in a shoe box with two Geiger counters and a Raspberry Pi which was able to detect muons and show the relativistic effect of time dilation. He programmed the Raspberry Pi to take care of all of the data from the detector, rather than using sophisticated electronics or analog circuits. Another novel aspect was developing the model for muon flux at different angles.

Special thanks go to his HPQ teacher Mr Brunskill and his supervisor, Dr Hedgeland.

Well done, Pratap!