Grammar Gazette- Issue 2, 2005

INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES

, ysi studentsgain from in ern . ti. nalexperience

The 20051nternational Young Physicists' Tournament was the opportunity o a lifetime for Year I2 Grammar girl Hilary Martin and her team mates. The five Queensland students were selected to represent Australia in Switzerland against teams from 23 other countries.

It was a fantastic trip and I can definitely say that IYPT has been the most exciting and rewarding activity I've been involved in at Brisbane Girls Grammar School.

incredible fun and hard work. Although only one team member can speak at once, the others were continually occupied passing notes with instructions or questions about the physics. I am pleased to say that in the initial rounds we defeated all of our opponents, including Croatia, Sweden, New Zealand, Kenya and the United States of America Although we made a huge leap from 10th to 4th place in Round 3, our points weren't quite high enough to pull us into the final and we missed selection by only 0.1 points - the smallest margin possible. We finished in 4th place and were awarded a joint third prize, while Germany, Belarus and America went on to the final.

The IYPT requires each team of students to do research and experiments into seventeen open-ended physics problems. This year, the problems ranged from investigating how avalanches happen to the mechanics of dragonfly flight. The competition itself takes the form of a series of "fights" between three teams as to the best solution to a particular problem. The tournament took place in Winterthur, a town in northern Switzerland, which was chosen as host partly due to its excellent science centre, the Technorama, where 150 Physics "nerds" were let loose for a blissful few hours one afternoon. The competition turned out to be After qua ifying at the National Championships, the team of four Year II students - Elizabeth For rest, E!izabeth Moule, lien-Li Tan a d Alexandra Price flew out from Brisbane en route to the USA to compete at the Future Problem Solving internationa Conference at Kentucky University.

"ilary Martin

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The competition was in the familiar FPS format of a two-hour booklet, written on the well-researched topic of Business Crime, followed by a skit presentation of the girls' Action Plan. While waiting for the booklets to be evaluated, there were some social obligations: a swap-meet' with a thousand other students and a dance to go to. And, of course, a visit to Lexington would not be complete without a visit to a horse stud where 'Smarty lones' was on his best behaviour. At the awards ceremony the girls learned that they had come 12th out of a field of 79 other teams in their division; a creditable achievement. The last stop was a visit to New York, which after the gracious, southern charm of Lexington was frenetic, noisy and exciting.

The first stop was in Los Angeles for an introduct'on to the American way of life The next day it was on to Cincinnati and finally Lexington. Here the girls enjoyed a 'homestay' with an American family whose hospitality was as warm and broad as their southern accents. A BBQ with other international students, a visit to the Taco Den, a Ball Game and the Mall all successfully helped to make the girls feel welcome. The serious business came next and for this we moved into the University

Mrs Anne Stubbing on and Mrs Vim Sharma, uture Problem solving Co. ordinators

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