St Peter's School: Physics Olympics

17/6/15

Today, I went to St Peter's School to take part in a physics competition! Our team comprised of two girls and two boys, all of us are physics geeks. We had a great time meeting like-minded people and having a go at the challenges during the day.

The first challenge we took part in was called 'Payload'. Teams had to design a boat with basic materials like card, a sheet of acetate, plastic bottles etc. and then we had to see how many marbles they would hold. Our boat managed to hold 69 marbles before it sank.

The next challenge was called 'Good Vibrations', in this one, we had to determine the weight of a toy duck using an oscillating ruler and some weights. First we timed how long it took a 50g weight to oscillate 20 times, next we timed a 100g weight and then 150g. We plotted our results on a graph. We then measured how long it took the duck to oscillate 20 times and, using the line of best fit, we found out its weight.

Next, we had to create an electromagnet and see how many paperclips we could pick up. We had a choice of whether to use a core of aluminium, steel, or iron. We were also able to choose how we connected our circuit. The best way to pick up the most paperclips was using a core of either steel or iron and connecting two cells in parallel to the coiled wire around the metal.

Our next challenge was to build a lighthouse using a magazine, wire and a bulb. The aim was to hold a creme egg as far off the ground as possible and connecting the bulb to the top, extra oints were awarded if we were able to get our bulb to flash three times. The strongest and sturdiest lighthouses were made of three rolled up pieces of paper joining in the middle (like a tripod) and another rolled up piece of paper on top of the joint holding the egg. The way to get the bulb to flash was to connect it up but with one side of the wire quite loose and tapping the loose end.

Our final challenge was to create a solar powered boat. We designed the boat and chose the best propeller then charged up our capacitor and let timed the boat.

Throughout the day, all members of the team took part in a Fermi quiz where we had to estimate values to the nearest power of 10. These included the volume of air above the county of Yorkshire, the amount of handcuffs needed to travel the distance of the moon's orbit around earth twice and how many Smarties weighed the same as a hippo. The bonus question was to estimate the amount of Smarties in a container. We were one of five teams to get closest to the answer to the bonus question which was 433 and we one 433 Smarties to share between us.

We didn't win but we definitely had a great time! Thank you to St Peter's for hosting the event and all of the sponsors.