Fifty teams from across the Northeast competed at Yale University’s 19th annual Physics Olympics this weekend. Taft scientists Sonny An ’17, Daniel Yi ’18, Yejin Kim ’18, and Portia Wang ’18 were awarded the bronze medal after five rounds of competition.
Each event in the Yale Physics Olympics (YPO) pentathlon is designed to test students’ knowledge of physics, as well as their creativity and ability to work as a team. Developed by members of the Yale physics faculty, the five, 45-minute challenges included the order of magnitude Fermi quiz, where students estimated how many grams of turkey are consumed in the United States on Thanksgiving; Ole Mississippi, which required students to build a paddle boat from simple materials, then race the boats a fixed distance and against the clock; and Wrights of Spring, where the scientists measured the period of a standard spring-mass system, then constructed two new systems with the same period.
“Our paddle boat was a nice design, but did not have enough stored energy to complete the course,” said Physics Teacher Jim Mooney. “The team did very well on the remaining events, scoring within or close to the top 10 in each. Our overall score placed us third, securing a bronze metal.”
