A team of Year 9 students from Telopea Park School have participated successfully in France’s Physics Olympiads.
With their project, Particles in Fog, the group of students (pictured here with their teacher in Paris) were awarded third prize.
Of the 25 schools who took part, only two were not French — Telopea Park School and a school from Hanoi, Vietnam.
Guided by teacher Floriane Michel, the students looked at how many particles crossed a designed cloud chamber per minute, a project inspired by the cloud chamber exhibition at Questacon, which allows the public to watch as tiny vapour trails form.
Scientists at the Australian National University, Cédric Simenel and Matthew Gerathy assisted the students to compare their results to scientific theory.
The students, Matthias Guillin, Marion Halas, Isabelle Harris and Laure Petitdidier, travelled to Lille, France at the beginning of the year where they presented their project to a panel of judges.
Ms Michel said it was a rewarding and enriching experience for the students.
“They had to defend their project in front of 10 scientists and explain it to the public,” Ms Michel said.
“As they were coming from so far away, they were the attraction of the competition,” she said.
“They were the youngest of the competition, so they can be very proud of the cohesion in the group, the investment and maturity they’ve shown.”
The competition, organised by a national committee of scientists under the patronage of the French Ministry of Education and the French Ministry of Industry, required applicants to present a scientific project to a panel of judges.
