Physics & Astronomy News

Sixty students from five local schools participated in the 2018 Western Kentucky Physics Olympics on Saturday, February 24, 2018.

The schools represented included:

• Bowling Green High
• Bowling Green Junior High
• Franklin-Simpson High
• Greenwood High, and
• Warren Central High.

The competition commenced with two activities that involved competitors arriving at the event ready to compete with devices they designed, constructed, and tested. For the Bomb Shelter event, teams built protective shelters designed and constructed to keep an egg safe from a dropped baseball. For the Bomb Disposal Manipulator Arm event, each team constructed from plastic soda straws and sewing pins the longest possible arm to support a mass.

The "Calculation / Communication Challenge" required each team to divide into pairs, with one pair creating a solution for an explosive problem, and the other pair following the directions to perform the experiment.

This year's "Impromptu Team Activity" required competitors to use rubber-bands to displace balloons outside of a large circlular playing field.

Winners for each of the five events for the 2018 Physics Olympics competition were:

• Do-Ahead Event: Bomb Shelter – Franklin Simpson High School “We’re Just Here”
• Plan-Ahead Event: Bomb Disposal Manipulator Arm – Greenwood High School “BPB”
• Communication-Calculation Challenge: Molecular Assembly – Bowling Green High School “perhaps”
• Order of Magnitude Quiz: Fermi Questions – Warren Central High School “Highly Unstable”
• Impromptu Team Activity: Explosive Fragmentation – Greenwood High Schools “L Provision Service”