2009 US Physics Team Training Camp: U.S. High School Students Prepare for International Competition

College Park, MD (May 15, 2009). The top U.S. High School Students will convene this week at the University of Maryland for ten days of physics education, friendship building and fun as they prepare and compete to represent the 2009 U.S. Physics Team at the 40^th International Physics Olympia to be held this year July 12-19 in Merida Yucatan, Mexico.

The coaches for the 2009 U.S. Physics team are: Paul Stanley, Academic Director/Senior Coach, Warren Turner, Senior Coach/Lab Coach, Andrew Lin, David Jones, and David Fallest. Training for the students will involve conducting lab experiments, taking exams, and hearing presentations from prominent scientists. At the end of the training camp, five students will be selected to travel to the Mexico for international competition.

The 2008 US Physics Team brought home one silver and four gold medals. Joshua Oreman, a 2008 gold medalist will be returning as a member of the 2009 US Physics Team.

The U.S. Physics Olympiad Program was started in 1986 by AAPT to promote and demonstrate academic excellence. The nine-day international competition brings together pre-university students from more than 60 nations. This year's event is sponsored by the Mexico Ministry of Education, the National Council of Science and Technology, and the Yucatan State Government with the support of the National University of Mexico, the National Polytechnical Institute, the Metropolitan Autonomous University, and the Institute for Scientific and Technological Research of San Luis Potosi. The 2009 International Physics Olympiad is being organized by the Mexican Physical Society, the University of Yucatan, and the Merida Campus of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnical Institute.

LIST OF EVENTS:

May 16-26 — Students visit University of Maryland for their intensive training camp.
May 26 — Five students chosen to represent the US at the international competition.
July 11 — Students arrive in Merida for the international competition.
July 19 — The International Competition's final awards given.

MORE ON THE WEB

Main website of the U.S. Physics Team: http://www.aapt.org/olympiad2009/
History of the physics team, including past winners: http://www.aapt.org/Contests/olympiad.cfm
The official website of the International Physics Olympiad: http://ipho2009.smf.mx/home

Four Golds and a Silver

College Park, MD – The 2008 U.S. Physics Team returns home triumphant this week, having earned four gold medals and a silver medal at the International Physics Olympiad held in Hanoi in Vietnam. Only the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, who tied for first, ranked higher than the U.S. team, which placed second along with South Korea and India.
The U.S. Physics Team’s gold medalists are:
Tucker Chan, Princeton High School, Princeton, NJ;
Danny Zhu, Stuyvesant High School, New York, NY;
Edward Gan, Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, MD;
Joshua Oreman, Harvard Westlake School, North Hollywood, CA;
and its silver medalist is Rui Hu, The Charter School of Wilmington, DE.

Chan, Zhu, and Hu graduated from high school this past spring; Gan and Oreman have one more year to go.

Photos and student biographies are at http://www.aapt.org/olympiad2008/team.cfm?Winners=1

The international competition over, these students look toward a bright future. “Here is a side of America to celebrate,” said Charles Holbrow, executive officer of the American Association of Physics Teachers. “Congratulations to the US Physics Team and their coaches. We should all be proud of these talented young people. And with the rest of the world, we should admire the achievements of all the Physics Olympiad participants. The sheer intellectual pleasure that radiates with youthful energy from their work together is a delight to behold.

Contact:
Martha Heil
American Institute of Physics
301-209-3088
mheil@aip.org

Closing Ceremony Held Today

US Physics Team with the Singapore Team at the Reception after the Closing Ceremony

US Physics Team at the Closing Ceremony

Back Row: (left to right) Paul Stanley, Warren Turner, Bob Shurtz

Front Row: (left to right) Rui Hu, Ed Gan, Tucker Chan, Josh Oreman, Danny Zhu

The closing ceremony of the 39th IPhO was held this afternoon. There were several speeches, several great performances - music and dance, and the awarding of medals. Our team received 4 gold and 1 silver medal. This is only the third time that the US has received 4 gold medals so we are very pleased with the results. There was a reception after the closing ceremony where we all had the chance to say good-bye to the friends that we made during the last 10 days.

Medals?

We shall let Vietnam and the organizers make the official medal announcements, but, after worrying about the difficult exams, the coaches finally have the results.

The coaches are pleased.

Ha Long Bay

The US team, riding on junks in HaLong Bay. We are the ones in the front of the boat dangling our legs off; in a moment, one of the crew will come and scold us and tell us to sit properly further back.



The boats remind us of motorcycles on the streets; so crowded, pushing and honking.



The bay, however, is magical. Ha Long? Not long enough.....

Afterwards we endure the long bus ride to return to Hanoi. The coaches go into meetings to talk about scores and medals.

erm, soo.. the weirdest thing occurred just now. while danny and i are finishing singing "i want it that way" (dont ask), there was a knock on the door. when i opened it, a contestant from cyprus was standing right in front of the door, holding, in combination, the red HELP sign, and the white TOILET sign*, like this:

| HELP |
| TOILET |

it took me quite a while to figure out what he was doing, but when i finally realized he actually needed to use our bathroom, i let him in. so he went in there and did his business while his teammate taped all of this with a camera outside. when they finally left, we laughed about it for a while and decided to blog about it. ergo, birth of post #18 on the physteam blog

* those are the signs were intended to be used during the examinations in case we needed help with the equipment or needed to use the toilet

Halong Bay

So today we went to Halong Bay, but first we needed to endure a 3 hour bus ride. Instead of letting the sleep deprived teams sleep at 6:00 in the morning, the bus guide wants us to play "games" and sing. This actually happens on nearly every bus trip, but it was really noticeable today because the trip to Halong Bay was so long. The trip was so long the US team made its first real purchase of food in Vietnam during the break in the trip. We bought a pack of 6 choco-pies (yes clones of the thing that hostess makes). Oh they were so good.

The games usually consist of the guide asking a riddle, and the teams on the bus competing to be the first to answer it. The guides of course understand that these are the best high school physicists in the world, so they ask us questions like "Where in the world does yesterday follow today?" See, the question incorporates the special theory of relativity, and the answer was "a dictionary". There were some other great questions as well.
"What's the saddest piece of clothing?"
"Why are dogs afraid to sit out in the sun?"
"What's the longest word in the English language?"
"In Oklahoma, you can't take a picture of a man with a wooden leg. Why?"
and like a bunch of other ones. Actually, we the tour guides didn't even get to ask us half the questions because the US team was so good at physics we knew the answer before the guides were done asking the questions. Yeah so the final score was like US: 11, UK: 4, rest of bus like 4 total. When the guides didn't feel like asking questions, we played Simon says for a while, and of course sang. The high point of that was probably our guide Quang singing a parody of James Blunt's you're beautiful.

The boats in Halong Bay were nothing like the ones we used to get to the Perfume Pagoda or to dodge the stalactites in the Eco-tourism centre. The boat we used for the Perfume Pagoda in particular was solid metal, floated about an inch above water level, and was powered by a 10 hoursepower, 4 cylinder, old lady. The coaches will probably post a picture of teh Halong boats pretty soon, but they were pretty standard two story group sightseeing boats. As a whole, these boats were more comfortable but less satisfying than the smaller boats we used in other trips because they were so high above water level.

The only place in Halong Bay that we actually made landfall on was the Heavenly palace grotto. The cave was incredibly big, and it was really eerie because fruity colored strip lighting was spread across the entire cave. Stalagmites and tites had fused so much that they formed dragon shaped statues. Hopefully the coaches will post pictures about the cave too, because it's kind of hard to describe its humongousness with words.