Peter Symonds’ students success in Physics Olympiad

A number of students studying Physics at Peter Symonds are celebrating their successes in the British Physics Olympiad competition, achieving outstanding results placing them as some of the top A-level physicists in the UK.

Over 2,000 students from across the UK took part in the Physics Olympiad, giving them the opportunity to stretch their understanding and compete with other talented physicists across the country.

Peter Symonds students did extremely well in the competition, with Chris Lotery achieving a Gold award and two students, Isabel James and Vedanshu Mahajan, achieving Bronze awards, ranking them among the top 100 entrants.

Following his success in the early rounds Chris has progressed to the Oxford training camp for the fifteen best competing physicists in the country, where selections for the International Olympiad are made. If successful, he will represent the UK at the International Physics Olympiad in Tel Aviv in July.

Commenting on the experience, Chris said, “I really enjoyed doing the Physics Olympiad. It was a great opportunity to delve into problems I hadn’t encountered before. I would definitely recommend it to anyone considering studying Physics or Engineering at university.”

Vedanshu added, “I took part in the Olympiad thinking it would be good entrance and interview preparation, so I started doing past papers around summertime last year. I found the questions fun, and stretching my knowledge to well beyond the course content we had been taught (especially for the astrophysics paper) to be really rewarding. It’s helped me learn how to develop and use problem solving skills.”

Simon Hunt, Physics teacher at Peter Symonds who supported the students during the competition, said, “It's great to see that some of our most talented physicists have been recognised in this way. To achieve a set of results like this in such a prestigious national competition is really impressive and reflects the hard work and dedication our students apply to their study of Physics.”