Physics Olympics...

Two LOLHS teams competed against more than 50 other teams including Hopkins, Taft, Sacred Heart, Guilford, and Ledyard at the Sloane Physics Laboratory of Yale University on Saturday.  Departing about 6:55 AM Team Quark consisting of Captain Hannah Morrison, Josh Liefeld, Ran McTigue & Connie Pan and Team Lepton consisting of Captain Rachael Larson, Ethan Carrion, Jackson Warren and Nikolai Stephen-Zumbaum competed in a pentathlon of physics challenges.  These included the Battle of the Bands -  determining the spring constant of a rubber band using potential energy;  Slow your Roll - maximizing the coefficient of friction as a ball rolled down a track;   The Wings of Time - using the Bernoulli effect with a pitot tube to determine fluid velocity; A Fermi Quiz - using common sense and mathematics to produce a reasonable estimate like that which Nobel Laureate, Enrico Fermi,  was famous;  and the Gravity of the Situation - determining the period of a variable acceleration physical pendulum.  The teams also enjoyed a short lecture explaining the 2018 Nobel prizes in physics and an exciting series of outsized physics demonstrations.  Although we were not in the top three ranked spots, the students had a great time.