The Wayne Hills Engineering Club sent 2 teams to the Physics Olympics at Monmouth Regional High School, Tinton Falls, NJ. The Physics Olympics took place last Saturday on January 10. The Engineering Club sent only one team last year so finding six additional people to participate in the events was just an indicator of how much interest this club has generated over the past year. The 6 events this year were: Fermi Questions, Target Drop, Lightest Support Tower, Egg Throw, Penny Bridge, and Pringle Event. 42 teams from 22 schools competed in the event. Mostly schools from Central Jersey participated so Wayne Hills was an outlier since it is located in northern New Jersey. Not even its crosstown rival Wayne Valley made it to the event.

A maximum of 100 points were awarded per event so the maximum score a team could be awarded is 600 points. The NJ Physics Olympics Silver Serial Bowl was awarded for one year of custody to the first overall team. The top three teams are also awarded trophies as well as the top team in each event. Judges in classrooms scattered throughout the school examined each device.

For the Fermi Question event, the order of magnitude of a quantity that is difficult or impossible to measure had to be estimated. Some examples would be “How many liters of air does an adult inhale in a day?” or “How long would it take a snail to travel from NYC to LA?”

For the Target Drop event, the landing point of a ball launched horizontally from a tabletop has to be predicted.

For the Lightest Support Tower event, the lightest tower that can support a 1-kg mass has to be constructed.

For the Egg Throw event, an egg has to be surrounded with a device that will allow the egg to be thrown towards a wall, without breaking, and resulting in the greatest bounce distance.

For the Penny Bridge event, a bridge made solely of pennies had to be designed and constructed.

For the Pringle event, the smallest container that will enable two Pringles chips to be sent through the US Mail without damage.

On the 1st team the members were Robert Salita, Pulast Thaker, Daniel Kang, Chris Ayalo-Bellido, Jacob Kessler, and Jacob Park. On the 2nd team the members were Michael Ferreira, Sophia Jeon, Yashvini Chauhan, Carlos Ayalo-Bellido, Alyssa Olivieri, and Pavel Lazurenko. Sophia Jeon, co-president of the club remarked, “I am genuinely thankful for the opportunity to have participated in Physics Olympics for the second time now. It’s always amazing seeing others who are as passionate about the same subject field as you are because that doesn’t happen so often for physics, especially. Although the preparation process until Physics Olympics was challenging at times, the hard work put into it was all worth it at the end when we went to the actual event. It is a rewarding experience, and I would recommend anyone who is interested in the engineering/physics field to join Engineering club to go!”

At the competition, Pavel Lazurenko was awarded third place for his penny bridge with a mold constructed using 3D printing in his CAD class.Overall 3rd place was Chatham High School. Overall 2nd place was Monmouth Regional High School. Overall 1st place was Bernards High School. Hopefully, next year the Wayne Hills Engineering Club will get better results at the next Physics Olympics.