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.

so thursday was the experimental exam. everyone on the team felt like he did very well, so we, as a whole, were pretty satisfied with ourselves that day.

today, we went to 2 buddhist temples in the morning. the temples were dedicated to 2 very important kings in vietnam's history. the temperature was hot

in the afternoon, we had an excursion to the ecotourism center. the name is relatively deceiving since there is no physical center to visit; but rather, we were split up into small boats that could fit 4 people and 1 rower, and snaked through the caves of a very beautiful lakes in the mountains. the scenery was very unique, and some of us managed to achieve zen from the pleasurable imagery that is our surrounding. the caves, on the other hand, interrupted the peace by providing us with an action packed boat ride that involved a lot of stalagmite dodging, for the ceilings were very low. o yea, and the temperature was hot

in the evening, we had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Professor Friedman of MIT about particle physics. however, most of the team felt that the lecture could've been much better had there not been a vietnamese translator repeating what the professor said after every slide in vietnamese. (disclaimer: this is not a complaint about the vietnamese people. we love the vietnamese)


tomorrow we will go to halong bay. hopefully we'll have enough energy to blog with more detail than this post and put up some pictures as well.

peace

~~US Physics Team

Crushed by a rice pounding machine?

A simple, but effective device.



A rice pounding machine. Ask any IPhO competitor how they really feel about such devices....



The US team meets with leaders to discuss strategies for the experimental exam. This picture is taken at the end of the day of the theoretical exam; the US team felt as if the exam was interesting yet quite challenging.