There are three age categories:

• 13-14
• 15-16
• 17-18

The submissions will be evaluated by a panel of 15 judges which includes: Steve Myers, the Director for Accelerators and Technology at CERN; Mariette di Christina, the Editor-in-chief of Scientific American; Vint Cerf, the Vice President of Google; and Shree Bose, who was the Grand Prize Winner in 2011 for her project on cancer treatment.

Some of the prizes include a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands with National Geographic Expeditions, $25,000 and $50,000 educational scholarships, a choice of internships at CERN, Lego or Google, digital subscriptions to Scientific American, Chromebooks, Android smartphones and much more.

The deadline for submissions is 1 April, 2012. Find out more at Google’s Science Fair website.

The competition is open to all primary schools in the Republic of Ireland and is linked to the primary school curriculum. Your project can be based on one of four categories:

• Living things
• Materials
• Energy and forces
• Environmental awareness and care

The competition is sponsored by Ericsson in association with the Atlantic Corridor development agency. First prize is a €2,000 voucher for computer or science equipment for your school, plus an opportunity to visit the Ericsson plant in Athlone. The second and third prizes are €1,000 and €4500 vouchers towards computers or science equipment.

The closing date to register for the competition is 23 December 2011. Your projects must be completed and ready by February 2012 for presentation in the regional heats. The final will take place in March in conjunction with the Atlantic Corridor STEM 2012 Conference.

Learn more

Read more about the competition at AtlanticCorridor.ie and download the application form for teachers (PDF, 3.15 MB)

“We got involved about two and a half years ago,” Robert Cullen, Creative Director of Boulder Media, told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland yesterday. “ We produced all the animation in-house and did all the final comp and renders. It was a pretty intensive project and quite ambitious as well.”

Asked about the current boom in animation in Ireland, he said: “For such a small country, there are a lot of animation companies so we’re attracting a lot of attention from the industry, from the States and from Europe as well which is always super.”

Games designers

Among the other awards on the night was a special category for young games designers. The challenge is to come up with a concept for a computer game, and show the basic design and playability.

The entrants don’t have to produce a working version of the game, but win the chance to develop their idea as part of the prize.

Read more about the awards

Category prizes include the Technology Prize, which is worth €7,500, the Advertising Prize worth €5,000 of consultancy, the Special Merit Prize worth €5,000 and the Academic Prize worth €2,500.

Previous competition winners have developed everything from drink safety mechanisms to biodegradable tents, integrated aviation footrests designed to reduce the risk of deep vein thrombosis, and terrain detection systems for the visually impaired.

Learn more about the competition and how to enter at the Think Outside the Box website and Facebook page.

Friday 18 November

Met Éireann is celebrating its 75th birthday with a weather exhibition at the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin which runs from 9am-5pm this Friday. Admission is free. For more information visit the Irish Met Society.

Kevin Nolan of the Irish Planetary Society will be hosting a lecture at Blackrock Castle Observatory in Cork. Kevin will discuss the forthcoming launch of the Mars “Curiosity” Mission on 25 November which aims to search for signs of life on Mars.

Kevin will also present 3-D images from a range of spacecraft that operate on or around Mars. Admission to the lecture is free. Visit Blackrock Castle Observatory for more information.

Saturday 19 November

The Dublin Children’s Museum, Imaginosity, will be hosting a “Kitchen Chemistry” event from 19-20 November. Children can learn about chemistry in a series of demonstrations and workshops. Learn more at Imaginosity.

The free FrogBlog art competition runs until 20 November and it’s open to Junior Cert students across Ireland. Students are invited to submit an art piece depicting science, nature, discovery  or space. You can photograph or scan your piece and email it to art-comp[at]frogblog[dot]ie. Winners receive a €50 iTunes voucher. Visit TheFrogBlog for more details.

Astronaut Shane Kimbrough. Image courtesy of NASA.

NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough recently completed a three-day tour around Ireland telling audiences in Cork, Dublin and Limerick about his experiences and announcing details of a competition to win a trip to a NASA summer camp in the US.

Kimbrough clocked nearly 13 hours of spacewalks over his career in order to carry out work on the International Space Station. On his tour he spoke to children, university students and members of the public about the effects of zero gravity on simple tasks like eating, drinking and exercising.

He also announced details of a competition to win a trip to the space summer camp in Huntsville, Alabama taking place from 29 July 2012 to 3 August 2012. The competition, which is sponsored by the US Embassy to Ireland, will be launched during Science Week this November. Details of how to enter will be available on the US Embassy Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Read more about Shane Kimbrough on NASA’s website.

“YouTube Space Lab” is an international competition in which teams of students submit a space experiment idea on video, and the judging panel includes Stephen Hawking and other leading scientists.

The winning experiments will be conducted in space on the International Space Station, streamed live for the world to see via YouTube.

The European finalists will win a visit to the training facilities of the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne in Germany.

The global winners will choose either a trip to Japan to watch their experiment blast off on the HTV cargo vessel, or a trip to Russia for space training at the facilities where Yuri Gagarin became a cosmonaut.

Find out how to take part on the competition’s home page.

Hydrogen Girl

Primary schools across Ireland are being invited to participate in a science-art competition to celebrate Science Week 2011 and its theme “The Chemistry of Life”.

Each winner will receive an individual prize of a Nintendo 3DS, as well as winning a science show to come to their school for the day.

The competition is designed to introduce children to the general concepts of the elements, and a first introduction to the periodic table through the superhero “League of Extraordinary Elements” with characters such as Hydrogen Girl (pictured here) and Carbon Boy.

Students are asked to design a new costume for the character they like from the table of six element profiles.

Find out how to take part on the ScienceWeek website.

All you need to do is compose, perform and video your rap, based on the Science Week 2011 theme of the “Chemistry of Life”. Then upload your video onto YouTube and send the link with a completed application form.

You can take inspiration from your everyday life – from lifesaving medication to microchips in our mobile phones, from the beauty products we use to the food and water we consume.

The competition is open to junior and senior cycle secondary school students and third-level students. Prizes will be awarded to categories 16 years and under, and 17 years and over.

Find out more on the Science Week website. Here’s one of last year’s winning videos:

Jackie Gorman from Atlantic Corridor and Michael Gallagher from Ericsson in Ireland with Minahil Sarfraz, a student of St Peter's National School, Athlone, at the launch of the competition

A major new science competition for primary schools in Ireland is being sponsored by leading telecoms company Ericsson in association with the Atlantic Corridor development agency.

The competition is open to all primary schools in the Republic of Ireland and is linked to the primary school curriculum. Through class project work and learning, the competition aims to provide students with an insight into the excitement of science and maths in today’s world.

Class projects should demonstrate the everyday value of understanding science and maths. Your project can be based on one of four categories:

• Living things
• Materials
• Energy and forces
• Environmental awareness and care

Michael Gallagher, Managing Director of Ericsson in Ireland, said: “We are delighted to sponsor this competition again and now to be in a position to take it to a national level. In Ericsson, we are committed to Ireland in the long-term and as a technology leader we feel it appropriate to also help plant some of the seeds of the future of our knowledge economy.”

Jackie Gorman, CEO of Atlantic Corridor, said: “The competition is a wonderful opportunity for primary schools and we are delighted to be running this event in association with our 2012 STEM Conference and a number of other initiatives over the coming months.”

Learn more

Read more on the Atlantic Corridor website, and download the competition’s application form for teachers (PDF, 3.15 MB)