Exonians Take First Place at U.S. Young Physicists Tournament
Seven Exonians recently won first place in the U.S. Association for Young Physicists’ Tournament. Held in Lynchburg, Virginia, over the last weekend of January, the tournament features several undergraduate-level research problems that high school teams aim to solve over the course of a year. Out of 15 schools, Exeter emerged victorious, having won the overall first place award and the Bibilashvili Award for Excellence in Physics.
“We’d gone through the entire process of performing an experiment, and the whole idea of the conference is to expose high school students to research, both theoretical and experimental.”
According to Physics Instructor Scott Saltman, the competition consists of various rounds of “physics fights.” Students complete preliminary rounds, where each team is the reporter two times and the opponent three times. One team has a 10-minute presentation on its theoretical and experimental solution to the problem. Then, the opposing team asks questions about it, initiating a discussion and sometimes challenging the solution.
Through this method of presenting and then questioning, the tournament effectively tests not only the contestants’ abilities to clearly articulate their research, but also their skill at thinking critically while engaging with others.
Upper Andrew Loevinger presented a physics-related problem about the moon. “[For] the Moon Problem, [I had to measure] lots of particular aspects of the moon’s orbit, and I presented how I measured that, where the error was and my final results,” he said. Loevinger continued, “There was an opponent team who would ask questions and cross-fire [what I presented]. So they would point out mistakes I made in my presentation or assumptions that weren’t good, but the real goal was for everybody to understand physics a little better.” According to Loevinger, the questioning was not meant to embarrass the other team, but rather to demonstrate further comprehension of physics.
After the opposing team spoke, the reporting team was allotted a minute to summarize its arguments. Then, the team members were asked questions by a jury of physics professors and active physicists for eight minutes. “The reporting team gets awarded a certain number of points [and the] opposing team gets a certain number of points, so they’re not really against each other,” Saltman continued. “Both teams can do really well, or both teams can do really poorly. What matters is your overall score.”
Upper Tony Ye described the competition as “interesting” and “intuitive.” He said, “It really tests your understanding of physics; you’re not just piling a bunch of formulas onto the screen to confuse your judges and your opponents.”
The students prepared for the competition over the span of an entire year. “At the end of the competition, they announced the problems for next year. We have a year to work on those problems, and we come to wherever the location is that year and present our solutions to the problems,” Loevinger explained, giving insight into the depth and complexity of the problems the students were assigned.
Upper Jenny Yang described tournament preparation as similar to a scientific experiment. “Basically, we’d done research for all of the problems and analyzed the data,” Yang said. “We’d gone through the entire process of performing an experiment, and the whole idea of the conference is to expose high school students to research, both theoretical and experimental.” Yang believes that the beauty of the competition lies in the contest’s aim to show high school students that they have the ability to investigate a problem and carry out the research themselves, which younger students normally think is out of reach.
Ye, who presented a problem with upper Chris Roper about projectile motion, wanted to thank his advanced placement physics class for aiding him in preparing for the competition. “At first, we were just reading papers and then towards the end of this fall term, we did more experiments,” he said. “After we were done with the AP Physics exam, we [had some time left over] to work on the projects, so that also offered me some insights which were very valuable,” he said.
Presenting problem solutions was a team effort. “I basically developed the model and the theory about projectile motion, but it was too much work for just one person,” Ye said. “Chris was interested in the problem, so he helped me out with the analysis.” According to Ye, Saltman helped him with the problem by letting him use a tennis ball machine to view projectile motion. “Before the contest, we had mock rounds and he was one of the teachers who was there to give us advice on presentations and how we could improve our slides,” Ye said.
Overall, the students felt that the months of effort they had put into preparation were worth it. “Two years ago, we came about ninth—we just didn’t know what we were getting into. Last year, we got third, which was definitely a big jump. And this year we came first,” Ye said, highlighting the improvement that the team had made over the past two years. Yang added, “It was really good to see all of our work pay off and to win.”