A group of local science students won gold at the 29th annual Physics Olympics held at UBC on Saturday (March 10), beating out high school students from across the province in over 60 schools.
During Physics Olympics, students use their skills to compete against other high school students by applying their knowledge to practical problems.
"There are schools out there who take this very seriously," said Alex Katramadakis, physics teacher at Howe Sound Secondary. "We beat a lot of private schools and a lot of academic schools."
The students had a month to build two machines beforehand, called pre-builds, for two of the events. One was a submarine, which had to pick up pins at the bottom of a water tank.
Students used a magnet to pick up the pins and a chemical reaction to raise the submarine back up to the surface again.
The second was a hydromatic lifter. The students had to build the machine to maximize the weight it could lift while using the least amount of energy possible.
The Howe Sound Secondary Students scored high in both of the events.
"We've always done well in the pre-builds," said Katramadakis.
But the talent wasn't limited to preliminary challenges - Howe Sound won first place because they did excellent on all six events, according to Kristin Schleich, one of the event organizers and a physics and astronomy associate professor at UBC.
"They did very well in our other four events as well," she said. "You can't just do well in one or two events."
Katramadakis agreed there wasn't just one reason or one crucial moment to take the team to the top.
"It was more of an all around success," Katramadakis said.
One of the goals of the Physics Olympics is to show students the practical applications of physics, for example BC Hydro is looking for a design for a hydromatic lifter, which would be environmentally friendly.
"One of our jobs is to engage students in a real world approach rather than textbook problems," said Schleich.
Other events were the electric maze where students had to guide electricity through a maze in the shortest time possible. There was also the Optical Practice where students had to beam light through optical elements to hit a target.
"We saw a lot of ingenious and different designs," said Schleich. Katramadakis said the students learned to think quickly when one approach to a problem didn't work and also learned a lot about working in a team.
"They often had to let go of their own ideas in favour of another's," said Katramadakis.
Another advantage to the Physics Olympics was the students got to visit UBC and see the possibilities available to them. "It exposed the importance of their schooling," said Katramadakis.
Katramadakis said he has had a lot of successful past students tell him the Physic Olympics were the best time of their lives.
This isn't the first time Howe Sound Secondary have had success in the Physics Olympics. They've had a couple second and third place finishes, but they'd never won gold before.
