Last month 393 secondary school students from 84 countries traveled to Bangkok, Thailand, to vie for medals in the 42nd International Physics Olympiad (IPhO), an annual event that attracts the most talented young physics students from around the globe. The United States gold medalists included Ante Qu, a senior at High School South.
The students were selected in a national competition sponsored by the American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Institute of Physics. The selection process begins with an exam given to outstanding science students from around the country that includes advanced topics such as the Lagrangian formula of mechanics, differential calculus for electricity and magnetism, and complex variables.
The 2011 team prepared for the IPhO at a 10-day training camp held at the University of Maryland-College Park.
In addition to learning the equivalent of a year of physics in under two weeks, training camp participants visited their congressional representatives on Capitol Hill, met with physicist and Nobel Prize winner Carl Wieman of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, had a photo opportunity at the Albert Einstein statue at the National Academy of Science, and met NASA scientists Jonathan Gardner, chief, Observational Cosmology Laboratory, and Neil Gehrels, chief, Astroparticle Physics Laboratory.
