Physics Olympics 2006

We Want You at the RPO!To stimulate interest in physics among high school students and to provide support for physics teachers in the region, the Department of Physics, Richmond University organized its frist every Richmond Physics Olympics Competition this spring. The daylong event was held in and around the Gottwald Science Center on Saturday April 8th, beginning with a welcoming ceremony at 10 am. Fourteen teams of seniors and juniors from high schools all over Virgnia, and one from as far away as Connecticut, competed for a variety of prizes.

The overriding theme of our event is that physics is fun! Our hope is that the participants enjoy themselves while applying basic ideas from physics to real world situations. Hopefully they will also learn some new physics during the day while intereacting with members of the physics department faculty, staff and students.

The competition takes the form of a pentathlon, consisting of five thrity-five minute events. The students compete in teams of four members. Each event is a task or simple experiment, which the students perform as a team and for which they obtain a result or measurement. The teams are ranked based on the closeness of their result to the correct one (as defined by the judges!). A physics general knowledge quiz (Fermi quiz) is also held throughout the day.

A similar competition is held annually ath the Yale University, the University of Liverpool, U.K. and University of Western Australia, Perth. Our event is held 'simultaneously' with our friends in Connecticut, England and Australian colleagues making this a tryly international event...Physics Olympics World Wide, POWW!

For additional information please contact Prof. Con Beausang at the Richmond Physics Olympics Hotline, (804) 289-8783 or by email at cbeausan@richmond.edu.