Four Honors Physics students – Nick Pietrorazio '19, Domenic Bernard '19, Dan Chen '19 and Rebecca Liu '19 – recently participated in the 20th Annual Yale Physics Olympics (YPO). Students from 50 schools from Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Jersey attended this day-long event.
The YPO consists of five challenges. The four-member student teams performed a simple task or experiment to generate a result. This year, students:
- Created a circuit in a speaker in it that created a certain frequency
- Calculated the moment of inertia of a solid sphere by rolling it down a ramp
- Made estimates of very large and very small things to a power of ten in a pencil and paper challenge
- Had to create a balloon rocket that would carry the greatest mass for the greatest distance
- Create a paired pendulum; one pendulum would maximize the energy of the second pendulum (i.e., by swinging one, the other would swing)
"Our team did very well," said Christopher Sutton, Science Teacher. "We had a few practice sessions beforehand. Our students were well-prepared and worked well as a team."
"We listened to each other's ideas," said Nick Pietrorazio '19. "We incorporated everyone's thoughts into what we were doing. We found the best solution to the problem. It was all about communicating with each other and having a good time. Everyone was very friendly, helpful and cooperative."