Physics

RMB

Physicists across the school were excited to be back in the lab and getting hands-on with experimental equipment after a long absence due to COVID. The department has been extremely active both inside and outside of the classroom with numerous opportunities for students to demonstrate their abilities and enthusiasm in problem solving and research.

Below are some updates from numerous physics teachers who coordinate these efforts. As ever, we have been blessed with exceptionally talented and motivated students allowing our teachers and technicians to share enthusiasm for exploring the physical world!

British Physics Olympiad Competitions

[Dr Gane]

This year 690 St Paul’s students across all year groups took part in the competitions of the British Physics Olympiad. The Olympiad is organised by The University of Oxford in close collaboration with the University of Cambridge and is supported by the National Physics Laboratory; it is the UK’s premier platform for the encouragement, development and identification of young physics talent.

Our Fourth and Fifth Form physicists took part in the British Physics Olympiad Junior challenge which is aimed at students in their penultimate GCSE year. Across both year groups our students achieved 81 Bronze, 118 Silver and 164 Gold awards. 11% of all gold awards went to St Paul’s students.

Our Lower Eighth Physicists competed in the Senior Physics Challenge where they achieved 3 Bronze, 28 Silver and 36 gold awards. With over 5,000 students taking part nationwide, over 5% of all gold awards went to St Paul’s students in this competition.

In round one of the British Physics Olympiad competition, our Upper Eighth Physicists achieved a healthy set of results, with four Top Gold, three Gold, eleven silver, eleven Bronze 1 and eighteen Bronze 2 Awards. Our top gold competitors were invited to take part in round two, where Rick Chen, Eashan Shah, Shahzeb Karim and Ali Imam-Sadeque achieved a Bronze, two Silvers and a Gold Award.

Congratulations to all competitors that took part in these notoriously challenging competitions. These are awards to be proud of and should fill us all with hope for future success in the Olympiad competitions.

Scanning Electron Microscope

[Mr Warriner]

As part of their physics enrichment programme, the Lower Eighth Physicist received an ‘Introduction to the SEM’ course from Mr Warriner, which laid the foundation for some of the excellent project work now being undertaken.

Paulines have continued to work apace this year using our Scanning electron Microscope (SEM) with multiple projects ongoing and pupils from a range of year groups becoming involved.

The year began with Senan Bottomley enhancing his Highmaster’s Prize winning essay on bee flight by creating spectacular montages of bee wings using the SEM. First he had to dissect and mount his wings before using the Gold-coater (donated by the Parents Group in 2019) to allow his organic samples to conduct charge. He then worked meticulously to take 100s of high resolution images of the wings at a (relatively low for the SEM) magnification of x100. Senan took a fresh approach for Pauline scientists in focusing on the presentation and post-production elements of the work, developing his Photoshop skills to combine his images into enormous montages of complete wings. He spent hours tidying these up and in some cases adding false colour to highlight features. These montages are reproduced here but were also printed on a larger scale for the Symposium held at SPGS, indeed the actual images at full size are about 5 metres wide!

Last year we initiated a research program on extraterrestrial materials and sample return missions to unravel the mysteries of our Solar System. Louis Kirkpatrick, and his team of Kush Gupta, Eashan Shah, Stavros Fakiolis, Seb Marsoner, Nicolo’ Sartori di Borgoricco and Lucas Ji started off by using the SEM to perform active research on carbonaceous asteroids and a group of meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites. Louis produced a montage image of a cross-section and wrote a detailed scientific report into classifying terrestrial meteorites. A group of Lower Eighth students including Charles Calzia, Ryan Rundstrom and Carleo Zhu have continued his work with a second meteorite sample. This group has fed ➦

back its findings at the Tonbridge science Fair, in which the SEM went on the road, and virtually with our SEM partner school in Japan and some pupils from SPGS. We have now approached the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) led by planetary scientists Dr. Hitesh Changela and Dr. Yoko Kebukawa, to propose performing preliminary examination on samples recently returned from the Haybusa 2 Mission – the first mission to return samples from the carbonaceous asteroid Ryugu to Earth in December 2020.

Asteroids are remnants from the early stages of the formation of our Solar System. Carbonaceous asteroids are the most abundant type of asteroid, and are unique for their high abundances of water-rich minerals such as clays and organics molecules. A rare group of meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites might be fragments of carbonaceous asteroids. The hypothesis that carbonaceous chondrites come from carbonaceous asteroids will be tested on samples of Asteroid162173 Ryugu returned by the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft.

Another Lower Eighth group led by Aiken Lau has been researching Dragonfly wings and has used this project to train younger pupils in the use of the SEM. The SEM continues to allow Paulines to experience active research in the school environment which stands them in good stead for further studies.

Partnerships & Outreach

[Dr Still] This year we were lucky to be able to restart our STEM Saturdays in which over 60 students from local partner schools attended year 10 LEGO physics sessions or a three week mathematical physics course for year 12 students. We also took part in the Junior School’s Primary Professor’s Saturday outreach programme, welcoming 30 primary age students into the physics labs to learn some astrophysics.

For the first time SPS students will be attending the Collyers College Festival of Science, a partner Mercer school. We will take the 5th form science prizewinners to attend seminars and lectures from academics and industry experts across all STEM subjects. We again welcome students from around the UK to our two residential summer schools covering the fields of Materials Science and Particle Physics, July 11 – 15. Alongside these we will also welcome 30 A Level and 72 GCSE students from Christ’s School to two days of Space Science talks and workshops. Over two days students will build rockets, immerse themselves in planetarium shows, attend lectures by researchers and design a space telescope. We will then welcome the same students back in Easter 2023 for a revision Easter School.

The Weizmann Safe Cracking Competition

[Mr Boydell & Mr Swartzentruber] A number of keen Lower Eighth students participated in the annual Weizmann ‘Safe Cracking’ competition. The tournament, run by The Weizmann Institute of Science, is a Physics and Engineering competition in which teams of five Year 12 students design and build physics-based puzzles, and attempt to crack others’ designs. There was a lot of interest this year; a record seven SPS teams pitched their ideas. From close competition, the most promising two teams were selected to represent the school and progressed to the building stage.

St Paul’s School’s team ‘GTW’ impressed judges with their arcade themed safe – featuring puzzles based on principles of circuits and electromagnetism. After placing third in the national round and qualifying for the international competition, team GTW attended this year’s Virtual International ‘Safe Cracking’ Physics Tournament over the spring break.

The team placed 1st overall out of 44 entrants, winning the international competition. While teams have come close in recent years, placing first nationally in 2019, it is not since 2016 that St Paul’s has celebrated an international victory. ❚

Team GTW: Kiminao Usami, Oliver Hiorns, Harry Rimmer, Eliyahu Gluschove-Koppel, and Owais Hussain.