Once again the very successful DCS Robotics team reached the final of the national competition in Galway.  A very early start on the Saturday morning saw Douglas Community School Fourth Years (and some Second Years) in the Radisson in Galway with hopes of reaching the European final in Germany.

The event is an international competition that starts in August with the problem being issued in the United States and Europe at the same time.  This year was based on table top tasks (a very big table!) for the robot, and a research project based around food safety.  Nearly 30 different tasks are set and you have to do as many as possible within the 2 minutes allowed.  We have been working on it since early September.  Many late nights and lunchtimes were spent, as well as teachers being very kind helping us complete the work.

For the presentation we created a website and looked at preserving food in the developing world.  The project opened and closed with a food safety rap of the semi-musical variety and contained our ideas on a PowerPoint for the judges to see our research.  The presentation was in a small room but the lads made it feel like an arena full of ideas.  The link to our web page is below.

The day of the competition is always a treat.  The compere is an English TV presenter and he keeps the whole thing fun.  There was lights and music, computers and laughter.  Some the colleges have stalls and there is a bit of food.  Our first event was the table robot.  Last year this was our downfall but this year things went better.  After the judges added up we felt it was a good start.  Then we had to answer questions on the team and its dynamics as well as our view on the value of the work.   Then we had a long chat with a technical team about the program and the build strengths.  As we waited for all this, the scores went up and we were in the lead after two rounds.  Even after three rounds we were third and into the semi-final.

Unfortunately we had a really bad run and missed a couple of the tasks by a centimetre and did not score the first round score even that would have got us into the final.  The lads were very philosophical and all said they had enjoyed the day.  The school should be really proud of them; they cheered not just for themselves but also for the Ursulines, Blackrock, Co. Cork, who came with just a couple of girls and were really grateful for the boost.  So we were third out of more than 40 teams who started out in the national competition and waited to see who had won.  Then a shock  – we got a special judges’ prize for the best participation on the day and the best teamwork and spirit.  There was even a cup made appropriately of yellow lego.  The lads were delighted and the trip home flew past.

All in all another great day for the school and praise all round for the lads’ attitude.  Everybody made a contribution; it was truly a team.  The team was Jordan Smith (Capt), Eoghan O’Brien, Pawel Kulicki, Matteo Campinote, Brian Creagh, Gavin Falvey, Fearghal Magner, Adam Dalton, Ciaran Devine, Leon Domoney, Daniel Mason, Brendan Couch, and Aaron Murphy.

Click here for the webpage that was created as part of our 2012 Robotics Competition. Our team created, developed and designed this page. It will provide information on various elements of food safety. We hope that you can learn about how to preserve and store foods. This website will also show our robots trip from lego to its glory. We hope you enjoy and learn a lot from us.

(Above: JP McCarthy, PhD student from UCC assists budding DCS mathematicians.)

Since September, Douglas Community School has been involved in running one of the first Maths Circles in Cork. These are after-school mathematics clubs for First Year students who have shown a particular interest in maths, and are run in conjunction with staff in UCC and CIT. Under the scheme, students from UCC are sent to any school interested in setting up a Maths Circle to help run the first number of classes. We were lucky enough to have J.P. McCarthy, currently studying for his PhD, who ran the first five sessions, in conjunction with teachers in the school. Since then, the Maths Circle has been run by Mr Ciarán Ó Conaill.

The classes are generally centred around problem-solving type questions, with students often working in groups of two or three rather than singly to solve puzzles. The aim of the classes is to continue to engage the more able students, and to challenge them in a subject they may find very easy in school. Given the enthusiastic responses from those involved, we seem to be achieving this aim!

All of the notes from the classes, as well as some supplementary material, are available online at oconailldcs.wikidot.com/mathscircles. We continue to be supported by UCC in the form of a dedicated website, www.mathscircles.com, which contains an ever-growing number of puzzles and resources for possible use in Maths Circles around the country, although it has to be said that DCS is one of the main contributors to the site in terms of adding puzzles and problems! We also look forward to having more students from UCC in the new year bring their enthusiasm and innovation to the students of Douglas Community School.

Ciarán Ó Conaill

Some Sample Problems:

1. In a knock-out tournament with 50 teams, how many games will be played?
2. Cork has about 270,000 inhabitants. How do you know for sure that at least two non-bald people in Cork have the same number of hairs on their head?
3. How many squares are on a chessboard?
4. A cable is made that runs all the way around the equator. After a few days, it’s decided that, instead of running along the ground, the cable needs to be 1 metre off the ground, all the way around the earth. How much extra cable is needed?
5. Add up all the numbers from 1 to 100 without using a calculator.
6. Make the number 1,000 using the number 8 eight times. You can use any operation (e.g. adding, subtracting, multiplying, etc).

Solutions:

1. Each team has to lose 1 match. You need 49 losers, so you need 49 games.
2. The most number of hairs a person can have is less than 200,000. So, the worst-case scenario is that you have 1 person with no hairs, 1 person with 1 hair, 1 person wih 2 hairs, etc, all the way to 1 person with 200,000 hairs. Now the next person must have some number of hairs between 0 and 200,000, so they have the same number of hairs as someone already counted.
3. There’s one 8×8 square, four 7×7 squares, nine 6×6 squares, etc, up to sixty-four 1×1 squares. That’s a total of 204 squares.
4. The circumference of a circle is , and the radius of the earth is roughly 6,400km, 6,400,000 m. Assuming that the equator is a circle, that gives a cable length of 12,800,000 m. To get the cable 1 m off the ground means using a radius of 6,400,001 m, which gives a length of 12,800, 002 m. That’s an extra length of 2 m, or 6.28 m. It’s a bit strange that this is so small, but what’s really odd is that the answer is the same, no matter what the initial radius. So the same would be true for the moon.
5. This is an old problem. The trick is to pair off the first and last numbers, so you look at 1+100, 2+99, 3+98, etc. There are 50 of these pairs (the last one will be 50+51), and each pair adds to 101, so that’s a total of 50×101 = 5050.
6. This requires a little, well, cheating. We need to use what’s called concatenation – joining numbers together. So one solution is: 888 + 88 + 8 + 8 + 8 = 1000.

Objective Assessment Tests

Saturday 4 February 2012

9.15am – 11.00am

Assessment 2

English, Maths, Irish

Saturday 3 March 2012

9.15am – 12.00 noon

Alternatively here is the brochure page by page as pictures…

ENROLMENT

You can enrol by post or by calling to the school.

Enrolment night is 7.00 – 8.00pm, Wednesday 18 January 2012.

Classes start on Monday 30 January 2012.

Douglas Community School athletes have had a busy week competing at the Cork Schools Invitational Cross-Country Championships at Cork Institute of Technology and at the All-Ireland u11-u19 Cross-Country Championships at the Curragh.

At Cork IT the school competed at the second leg of the Cork Schools Invitational Cross-Country Series and came away with two team wins in the First Year boys’ race and the Second/Third Year boys’ race. The First Year race was held over 1000m and the school was led home by Sean Barber, Ben Smith, Daniel Barry, Patrick Hajdul and Michael Scully. In the Second/Third Year race over 2000m, Fionn Bracken led the team home with a great run. He was assisted by Declan O’Herlihy, Dan Begley and Fintan Cadogan.

The school had athletes in action also at the All Ireland u11-u19 Cross-Country championships at the Curragh and it proved to be a very successful day. The u15 team came third with a superb run by Liam Harris in fourth and great runs also by Luke Varian, Caleb Sullivan and Jack Twomey. The u17 team came sixth led home by Billy Murphy, Jamie O’Connell, John Durcan and Eoin Bourke. The best was saved for last as the u19 team became All-Ireland team champions taking the title by 21 points. They were led home by Cullen Lynch, David Kelly, Jamie Sullivan and Cillian Fleming.

Steven Macklin

Douglas Community School athletes competed at the first leg of the Cork Schools Invitational Cross-Country League held at Tramore Valley Park recently. The weather conditions were ideal for racing with blue sunny skies. The First Year students raced over 1000m and here the school’s team ran superb winning the team title with eight athletes in the top 16 out of 120 people. The team was led home by Sean Barber fourth, Cian Dadgar fifth, Sean Smith sixth and Michael Scully seventh. The combined Second/Third Year race was held over 2000m and here DCS also won the team title led by Declan O’Herlihy in third place and fine runs from Jack Twomey, Fionn Bracken and Dan Begley.

The school also recently got the news that they will represent Ireland at the World Schools Cross-Country Championships in Malta in March. A seven-man team from the school will travel to the prestigious event for u17s which is only held every two years. Douglas Community School finished fifth at the event in 2010. Congratulations to the team on their selection.

Steven Macklin

At the Cork u20 Championships the schools athletes had a clean sweep of the medals, with Peter Hanrahan first, Cullen Lynch second and Cillian Fleming 3rd. The team also won the gold medals. At the Munster Championships the u13 team finished in 11th place with great runs by Ryan Herlihy, Michael Scully, Shane Madden and Evan Scully. The u15 team came first led by Liam Harris in second place, Luke Varian 10th and other fine performances by Stephen Cotter, Caleb Sullivan and Jack Twomey. The u17 team came first also with Billy Murphy a superb third and great races from John Durcan, Alan Ring and Eoin Bourke. Finally the u19 team also won the gold medals led by Cullen Lynch in fifth place and a fine performance by Cillian Fleming in 10th place. Well done to all the athletes on some great performances.

Douglas Community School athletes had another very successful weekend competing at the Munster Even Age Cross-Country Championships at Newmarket-on-Fergus, Co. Clare. Weather conditions were tough and a difficult course added to the challenge. The u14 boys team came a superb fifth place in their first ever Munster Championships, led home by David Smith and with other superb runs from Ben Smith, Michael Scully, Ethan Bevan and Ryan Herlihy. The u16 team came second with Jamie O’Connell having his finest ever run in 11th place with Alan Ring 13th, Luke Varian 14th and Stephen Cotter all having great runs also. The u18 team took team gold with Billy Murphy in sixth place and he was followed home by Ian Tobin, Brendan Couch, Eoin Bourke, Emmet Bracken and John Durcan.

There was more great news for the school this week when they u17 team was selected to represent Ireland at the World Schools Cross-Country Championships in Malta next March.  This is a huge achievement for the school.

Steven Macklin