February 8, 2008
Bowling
Green, Ky. - “The Science of Wizardry” is the theme for the 2008 Western Kentucky Physics Olympics, a half-day competition for high school students hosted by the WKU Department of Physics and Astronomy.
This year’s pentathlon of challenging problem-solving activities that reward teamwork, creativity and communication will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Feb. 23 at WKU’s Thompson Complex Central Wing.
Each high school in the region is invited to send one or more four-person teams to the competition. Teams from Warren Central, Greenwood, Bowling Green, Ohio County and Owensboro Catholic high schools have already registered. The registration deadline is Feb. 15; teams can register online at http://physics.wku.edu/olympics/registration.html.
The 2008 Physics Olympics includes “Dematerialization,” which requires each team to perform for the judges a demonstration of making a pencil disappear and to present a report that identifies the science behind their act of dematerialization; “Electromagnetic Locomotion,” which requires each team to design, construct and use an electromagnetic device to, without any visible mechanism, turn a coil of wire and lift an object; and “Transfiguration,” the Calculation/Communication Challenge which requires two members of the team to carefully observe and devise a plan to transform a three-dimensional shape into another shape, and the other two members to use those instructions to recreate the desired result.
The final two events -- the “On-the-Spot Activity,” a mostly hands-on, impromptu challenge, and the “Order-of-Magnitude Quiz,” a brain teaser which asks contestants to quickly estimate answers for extreme situations -- will remain cloaked in secrecy until those events actually begin.
Each of the four contestants on the team with the best score in the overall competition will receive a $500 scholarship to attend WKU.
Additional information about the Physics Olympics is available online at http://physics.wku.edu/olympics/.
More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.
For information, contact Richard Gelderman at (270) 745-6203.
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