On March 12, five students from ERHS joined teams from throughout Long Island at Farmingdale State to compete in the 38th annual Physics Olympics.

This year, the five featured events were “Accelerate!”, “Physics Quiz Bowl,” “Fermi Questions,” “Let us Reflect” and “Precisely Predicting Projectiles.”

In the ‘quiz bowl’, teams competed to become the first team to 20 points while answering questions about mechanics.

In the ‘fermi’ event, students had to use teamwork to estimate quantities that are either challenging or impossible to measure directly.

The ‘reflection’ event required students to use five front-facing mirrors to reflect a laser around obstacles and strike a target. Students had to collaborate with each other to calculate where a projectile would strike the ground. This year’s competition had an added difficulty with the target being placed on top of a constant velocity toy car.

Lastly, the ‘accelerate’ event required a team member to move with a constant acceleration of 0.5 meters per second squared for up to 25 meters. Team members were placed along the track with stopwatches to communicate and assist each other.

Congratulations to our Rock science scholars who placed 5th in “Accelerate!” and 6th in “Let us Reflect.”

Chloe Becker
Isabella DeCunzo
Everett Gamache
Jehanie Jacquet
Jordan Lu

Date Added: 3/29/2024