Last month, seniors Finn Frankis and Sahil Gosain, juniors Arya Maheshwari and Saloni Shah, sophomore Sasvath Ramachandran and freshman Tiffany Chang competed at the 2020 US Invitational Young Physicists Tournament, held at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. Each team took part in a “physics fight,” in which students present their solutions and are questioned by a member of another team. Teams are judged on the quality of their presentations as well as their ability to ask and answer questions. Although Harker was not one of this year’s top placing schools, the team was awarded the Clifford Swartz Trophy for having the best poster presentation. Harker won the tournament in 2011, 2014 and 2015.
Freshmen David Dai and Rishab Parthasarathy were recently selected to be two of 20 high school students on the 2019 U.S. Physics Team. Each year, the American Association of Physics Teachers selects team members from the top scorers on the USA Physics Exam, who are then invited to a boot camp at the University of Maryland, College Park. Five of these students will then be chosen for the traveling team for the International Physics Olympiad in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Last month, the American Association of Physics Teachers named Swapnil Garg ’18 one of 20 high school students nationwide who will contend for a spot on the United States Physics Team. Garg and the other candidates are currently completing a boot camp held at the University of Maryland, after which five students will be selected to represent the United States at the International Physics Olympiad, held in Lisbon, Portugal, from July 21-29.
Garg was one of 11 Harker students who qualified to take the United States Physics Olympiad (USAPhO) exam after scoring in the top 10 percent on a screening exam in January. The others were then-seniors (now graduates) Jimmy Lin, Neelesh Ramachandran and Shaya Zarkesh; juniors Timothy Chang, Kaushik Shivakumar and Katherine Zhang; sophomore Jeffrey Kwan; freshman Daniel Wang; and eighth graders David Dai and Rishab Parthasarathy. Of those, Kwan, Parthasarathy and Zarkesh each won a bronze medal, and Dai and Shivakumar received an honorable mention.
Harker had a solid showing in the 2017 Physics Bowl, organized by the American Association of Physics Teachers. Rising seniors Swapnil Garg, Jimmy Lin and Neelesh Ramachandran, and rising junior Cindy Wang were among the top 100 scorers in Division 2 (comprising second-year physics students). Out of a possible 40 points, Garg scored 28, Lin and Neelesh each scored 25, and Wang scored 23. The average score for Division 2 participants was 13.1.
With a team total of 122 points, Harker took third place in Division 2, tying with Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which placed second due to having the highest-scoring student.
The Physics Bowl, which this year included more than 7,100 students from around the world, is a 45-minute, multiple-choice exam consisting of 40 questions on topics commonly covered in high school physics courses.
Harker had a solid showing in the 2017 Physics Bowl, organized by the American Association of Physics Teachers. Rising seniors Swapnil Garg, Jimmy Lin and Neelesh Ramachandran, and rising junior Cindy Wang were among the top 100 scorers in Division 2 (comprising second-year physics students). Out of a possible 40 points, Garg scored 28, Lin and Neelesh each scored 25, and Wang scored 23. The average score for Division 2 participants was 13.1.
With a team total of 122 points, Harker took third place in Division 2, tying with Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which placed second due to having the highest-scoring student.
The Physics Bowl, which this year included more than 7,100 students from around the world, is a 45-minute, multiple-choice exam consisting of 40 questions on topics commonly covered in high school physics courses.
Harker had a solid showing in the 2017 Physics Bowl, organized by the American Association of Physics Teachers. Rising seniors Swapnil Garg, Jimmy Lin and Neelesh Ramachandran, and rising junior Cindy Wang were among the top 100 scorers in Division 2 (comprising second-year physics students). Out of a possible 40 points, Garg scored 28, Lin and Neelesh each scored 25, and Wang scored 23. The average score for Division 2 participants was 13.1.
With a team total of 122 points, Harker took third place in Division 2, tying with Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which placed second due to having the highest-scoring student.
The Physics Bowl, which this year included more than 7,100 students from around the world, is a 45-minute, multiple-choice exam consisting of 40 questions on topics commonly covered in high school physics courses.
Harker’s team of physicists took third place overall at the United States Invitational Young Physicists Tournament, held late last month at Philadelphia’s University of the Sciences. The team – comprising senior Manan Shah, juniors Neelesh Ramachandran and Selin Sayiner, and sophomores Ayush Pancholy and Ashwin Rammohan – earned 70.5 points to tie for third place, trailing just 1.5 points behind the second place finisher.
Important to the team’s success in Philadelphia was the work done by the research team of juniors Joanna Lin and Justin Xie and sophomores Nishant Ravi and Kaushik Shivakumar. These students spent many hours after school performing research and running experiments that provided valuable information to the team that represented Harker at the tournament.
The Young Physicists Tournament is held in a round-robin format and has schools debate solutions to various problems. Teams are evaluated based on the quality of their theoretical solutions, experimental evidence and answers during Q&A portions.