The Study School Physics Team 2010

The Study School Physics Team 2010

The Study School Physics Team 2010

The Study School Physics Team 2010
This year, the Physics Team from The Study School won the Montreal regional championships and earned a spot to compete against 34 teams from around the world in The Annual International Shalheveth Freier Physics Tournament, that takes place every year in Israel. This international competition is hosted by the Weizmann Institute and always takes place on the Weizmann campus in Rehovot. This year, the competition occurs on March 16th and 17th. This blog is to document our experiences in the competition and through our travels in Israel.

Star Trek Safe

Star Trek Safe
Our beautiful physics safe (The U.S.S. Study)

We Won Third Place!!

We Won Third Place!!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Day 2: The Competition (By Asli)

After the judging and the glass-blowing workshop, we started the inter-team competition. While one to two members of our team, which usually ended up being Cristina, stayed with our safe, the other three to four members would try to break into other safes. We would read each safe's riddle or clue, and then we would have 10 minutes to crack the safe. If we couldn't break into the safe, the person staying behind from the other team would have to show us how to open it within two minutes. If the person from the other team could not break into their own safe, or if there was a malfunction that stopped us from opening the safe, we would receive points as if we had succeeded. We broke into 1 out of 6 safes, but we were so close to opening a second one! All of the safes we saw were unique and needed a completely different approach for the break-in. Fortunately, we had Talya and her optimism to keep us going when we got discouraged. Once the attempt was over, we would grade each safe based on originality, aesthetics, and overall impression. We then ranked each safe that we saw. Each team that saw our safe gave us a grade. The overall grading system for each safe consists of the following:
-45% comes from the judges' evaluation
-20% comes from peer evaluation
-15% comes from how many times our safe was broken into
-10% comes from our success in breaking into other teams' safe
-10% comes from the written reports that we've been sending in to the competition since November

All in all, the competition was definitely a friendly and thoroughly enjoyable one. Even though some of the teams were very nervous and stressed, we had a blast!

No comments:

Post a Comment