There are just two weeks left in which to submit entries for school science competition the Bright Spark Awards.

The awards encourage teams of pupils to use cross-curricular skills in Stem (science, technical, engineering and maths) subjects, and are open to primary and secondary schools across Kent and the south-east.

Shortlisted teams will present their work at the Dragons’ Den-style awards ceremony at the Sandwich premises of Bright Spark judge Discovery Park.

And the prizes include £500 for the overall winners, as well as money-can’t-buy experience days with leading Stem businesses.

But to have any chance of taking part in the awards ceremony, details of projects must be registered online by noon on Friday, June 14.

One of the more quirky projects registered this year analyses levels of radiation in common foods and drinks.

The Radioactive Tea project was submitted by a two-girl team from Simon Langton Girls’ Grammar School in Canterbury, and the results may well give tea lovers something to chew over.

Team member Lucy Kennet said: “We started out our project with tea, coffee and brazil nuts, and we concluded from that that tea was the most radioactive.”

Her collaborator, Molly Bosworth, added: “During our experiment we had to measure out tea leaves and put them in a beaker.

“The Timepix chip we used went over these tea leaves and measured the radioactive particles emitted from them.

“Comparing the particles emitted to the background radiation, we could see that the tea leaves had at least 1.5 times the amount of radiation compared to background levels.”

The project emerged from the pupils’ studies for their GCSEs, and illustrates how the Bright Spark Awards provide a platform to showcase work schools have already prepared or submitted for exams or other competitions.

The girls believe their findings have real practical value in demonstrating possible health risks of consuming certain foods or drinks in excess.

Lucy said: “For the average person it would be completely fine. However, for those on dialysis who struggle to remove potassium from their systems this could be potentially dangerous for them.

“So what we’d like to do next is inform healthcare professionals of the risks of tea.”

The girls now hope to present their work to Cern – the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Switzerland during a visit there next year.

Besides Discovery Park, the other Bright Spark judges are BAE Systems, Atkins Global, Megger, the ITL Group, EduKit, Highways England, Pfizer, Kent Renewable Energy and Golding Vision.

To register projects and find out more about the competition, visit kmcharityteam.co.uk/brightspark.

And watch a video about the Radioactive Tea project here: