Physics is in the Air

The Celebration Day!

NEWSLETTER – July 23th 2012

Issue nO.9

Before the start of the football match the air was thick with excitement and tension. It seemed like everyone was feeling good, as the day be-gan with a warm-up.

IPhO press asked how the Hong Kong team were feeling. At first sight they were rather quiet. Were they nervous? “Actually, yes, I am,“ admitted one from the Hong Kong team. “I’m sure anyone can beat us. In Hong Kong football is very popular, but we are still physicists!“

Do these geniuses have a role model? “Richard Feynman is a physicist and a sup-porter of good education. He stands for bringing up the next generation to do more and more physics research,“ the Hong Kong team mate replied confidently.

We asked others who was their favourite physicist.Some in the Canada and USA teams also chose Feynman, but others thought that Newton deserved the title.

As it was a day of football, we also asked

who were their favourite footballers. “Oh, we don’t really follow that thing,“ admit-ted many of the interviewees, who perhaps were not so knowledgeable about football than they were about physics. But fortunately there were teams who had their favourites - France team went for Zinedine Zidane and Canada thought that Maradona was the best.

But what do boys think of girls who play football? Should football be more popular among girls? The Canada and USA teams noted that football was more popular among girls back in their countries, thinking maybe here in Estonia it was not that popular. “Foot-ball is like any other sports, so if girls want to do it, we have nothing against it,“ said the Italy team. “It might be just a little unfair, if girls and boys played together, but there are girls teams too,“ added the Hong Kong team.

Soccer v American football“Soccer is really fun to play,“ thought the USA and Canada teams, although American football was more popular as it is played by

many countries of the America continent. “Usually we watch more American football, but soccer is more fun to play.“ The USA team also added that they actually played only soccer, even though they were from America.

We asked participants how they liked such an event as a football match. The feedback was really positive. The students were glad that they were given such an opportunity, and some found it to be relaxing after the exams. Of course there were some nervous teams too, who thought that football was not as comfortable as physics. Everyone still seemed to enjoy the football day, no matter that you could often not see the balls flying towards people. After the game competitors were very hot, but their faces glowed with happiness after their energetic encounters.

Text: Brenda Rauniste

Different emotions made the air colourful Ph

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Physics makes girls curious

It is quite rare to see girls in such a male-dominated event like physics olympiads. However, believe it or not – there are girls who simply adore physics! During the football tourna-

ment we had a chance to get to know these special participants better.

“I started studying physics at school as a little girl,“ said Frederica Maria from the Ital-ian team. Physics problems have attracted her ever since, because she loves the feeling she gets after solving a problem.

The girls from Kuwait are interested in physics, because they find it easy at school.

experiments were marked

The second moderation gave the final scores for the experiments and also the overall results for the countries. Though grading experi-

ments is trickier due to differently interpret-ed data, leaders told us that the grading went well. “We were actually even stricter than the markers,“ said Austrian leader Helmuth. Hungarian leader Peater added: “The mark-ers gave us more points than we expected.“

Text: Saile Mägi

They described their studying methods: “Our teachers actually show us what laws mean and don´t stick to just pure theory.”

Laura from Switzerland said: “I don´t feel a lot of pressure, I am just happy that I hap-pened to be in the team. I think I am a little bit crazy, because I am actually even more in-terested in mathemathics,” she said revealing her biggest passion.

Canadian girl Melody started to learn physics because she wanted to understand bi-ology and chemistry better. Her friends and classmates find it quite natural that she likes science and maths, so no one is surprised by

it. Melody added: “Certainly, if there were more programs for girls in physics, then that would get more of them interested.”

The Suriname girls said: “In Suriname girls can be even more involved in physics than boys,“ Lots of girls were good at phys-ics in their country, they asserted. “We live in the 21st century, boys and girls are born equally don´t think gender should be a fac-tor that stops you from doing anything,” said Priya confidently.

Text: Liisi SündPh

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Picture gallery

Victory dance.

Are you sure you can pass this guy?

seizing the moment. Would you like to dance?

Let’s hit it together.

Look how high I can jump.

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Feynman’s Corner

Coffee foam (solution)The foam consists of a large number of bub-bles; each bubble surface refelects part of the light back, and a large number of bubbles re-flect back all the light. So, the foam is white, because it reflects the daylight into our eyes. However, before coming into our eyes, this light passes a small layer of coffee which makes the originally white light creamy.

A smart hit (solution)Mirror S from OA to get S’, then mirror S’ from OB to get S’’. Then connect S’’ and S by a straight line and fold the line SS’’ back to the corner ÐAOC by reflections from OB and OA. This is also the shortest path from S back to S touching both walls.

CloudsHave you noticed that the lower boundary of clouds is flat, but the upper boundary is “puffy”. Why?

Clouds (solution)When well-mixed humid air ascends, it cools down due to adiabatic expansion. The extent of expansion and hence the temperature is defined directly by the height of the air par-cels. When the air temperature falls below the dew point (dependent on the air humidity), a mist is formed – this is a point where a parcel passes a lower boundary of the cloud. Since all the air parcels have the same humidity, this happens for all the parcels at the same height, so the lower boundary is flat. The mist ascends further due to turbulent rising air cur-rents, and so the upper boundary of the cloud is defned by the turbulent pattern of the air currents – this is random and “puffy”.

Happy Birthday!

RasmusKuusmann

sung-WonKIM

Who will make it first?

You keep getting on my way. My legs are longer.

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What are you doing?

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