The British Physics Olympiad was first founded in 1979 and was organised (by a group from Oxford University) for year groups 11 – 13. During the pandemic, it was hard to encourage schools to get back into the challenge, so it was held online as multi-choice questions. 5300 students took part in this. However, this year, the organisation was able to also provide a physical paper, asking schools to do it on the 4th of March.
Woodford county high school is used to taking part in these challenges; they provide their students with the opportunity of doing the maths challenge from year 7: the junior, the intermediate, and the senior. With Olympiads like the maths one or the linguistics one or the physics one, the problems are said to be ‘quite abnormal’ by students. It is simply because they are more to test your thinking and see what your methodical process is to solve a question.
This year, A-level physics students at the school were able to take part in the British Physics Olympiad. As mentioned earlier, the questions are not based on what you know, but more on your application, which means it is much harder to revise for something like this. Whilst hearing that they should not expect to get an award (bronze included), some students still decided that they would still try for the experience of it.
On Friday the 4th of March, the students went to combat this paper, which was an hour-long. The difficulty level of the questions was tremendously high since it required not only different physics and maths skills but a lot of logical thinking. The first section was multiple-choice, whilst the second part was wordier and maths questions. It consisted of a lot of physics topics that are taught at A-levels, from electricity to forces, but to a higher degree of challenge. It is even emphasised on the website that the Olympiad is only a challenge, and not a replica of an A-level paper, which was believed to be ‘somewhat relieving’. Most students from Woodford were very astounded by the level of difficulty in the questions and expressed their tiredness after doing it. “It truly needed a lot of determination to persevere through it all for the entire hour,” said Nasiha Khan.
After 2 weeks, students across the country were given their results. In order to get a low bronze, students had to get 12 out of 50. Although sounding easy to achieve, it really was not. The questions were marked just like how a normal test at school would be marked: very harshly. In order to get gold, one had to get 26 out of 50, and only 71 students in the entire country were able to achieve this score. Students who get this are able to proceed and potentially move to the International Physics Olympiad.
Overall, even though extremely a very hard and humbling experience, the students studying Physics at Woodford believed that the experience was very valuable for the future.
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