This year, 6,000 middle and high school students gathered for this competition. The objective is to reward the best scientific projects from throughout mainland France and overseas. The winners are five high school students from the Institut Fénelon in Grasse, as well as their teacher.
In total, there were 120 projects which were presented through an explanatory video, which they filmed and edited in one day, and a report, delivered just before the end of the deadline.
The seventy-two juries selected twenty-three to go to Paris, including them. There, Edward Fischer, one of the members of the winning team, explains that “in the morning, on two occasions, juries passed at random. In front of each jury, we had to present a ten-minute oral presentation to explain everything. We were asked rather broad questions in French and English. We therefore had to answer them in the two languages”.
In the afternoon, the questions were a little more pointed and precise. Which did not prevent them from being one of the two teams selected to participate in the major European EUCYS competition.
Stella Variabilis
The high school students at the Fénelon Institute decided to embark on an astronomy project: “We have a science club at the base, we’ve been doing small competitions for two years now. But the idea of really discovering a new variable star and cataloging it intrigued us and we decided said why not embark on a big project like that”declares Émilie Godet, member of the team. “We don’t know anything about astronomy. It was completely new to us”adds Edward.
A project encouraged by their teacher, Jean-Luc Martin, who is passionate about this field. “What we wanted was to discover a new variable star. It’s a fascinating set of celestial objects that show changes in brightness over time. The one we discovered is called USNO 1350 -02754253, that’s a lot of numbers! In the “C’Génial” competition, we need to clearly explain the steps of our discovery.”says Stella Variabilis participant Norah Lee.
A name that Jean-Luc Martin humorously describes as “not very original, but at least it has a little intellectual effect, Latin, science, all that! Stella Variabilis means “variable star” in Latin.
Their curiosity and involvement pushed them to carry out this project together for about a year, to meet up during weekends and holidays, to help each other, and to learn how to use new software.
What is the next step?
From September 9 to 14, three of the team’s five participants will have to travel to Katowice, Poland: “This first place gives us the right to participate in the international EUCYS competition. And there, it seems to me that the first prize is 7,000 euros for the group”specifies Edward.
A golden opportunity, bringing together young people between 14 and 20 years old, that the big winners of the “C’Génial” competition do not intend to miss.
Now their goal is to improve their presentation, which Norah makes clear to us: “Across the way, there are very big projects, that’s obvious. So, we’re going to refine the project, deepen it, and the idea would be to add our personal touch to the project, to have something extra” .
Apart from this new opportunity to shine internationally, students are motivated by the idea of discovering the projects of others, meeting great researchers, and being able to travel to Poland.
They remain very proud of themselves regarding their discovery: “We already knew that this star existed, it is listed, but they discovered that it was variableannounces their teacher. So now we are being registered in the American VSX database (the international variable star index). There is a specific procedure to follow, because you must provide supporting documents. But there is no possible doubt. This star is indeed variable”he concludes.
