Physics Olympiad

On a very sunny and warm Wednesday 18th June, Mr Scott and 4 students in Year 9 (Jonathan ‘Thinker’ Allsup, Dan ‘Technical’ Allday, Guy ‘Sparky’ Prew and Nick ‘The Engineer’ Clark) made their way across to York for the Physics Olympiad.

They competed with 34 other schools from around the country. The team working and Physics activities included, making the tallest paper lighthouse, building the widest Jenga bridge, the fastest solar powered boat and lots of other tasks.

During the day there was also a Fermi quiz the students had to complete. This included questions such as:

  • How long would it take to reach the centre of our Galaxy (Milky Way) if you were travelling at the Mototorway speed limit?
  • How many trips would it take to move the whole of Mount Everest using only the boot of an estate car?
  • How many human populations would it take to rise the worlds sea level by the height of the human head?

As you can see these are some pretty tough questions. At the end of the day the boys did incredibly well, and came 8th in the competition out of 35 teams. An outstanding achievement, especially due to the fact that the only teams above our boys were all big private schools. Roll on next year!

Mr Scott