Baton Rouge Magnet High students are semifinalists for the U.S. Physics Olympics

Baton Rouge, La —  Two Baton Rouge Magnet High School students, Bob Liang and Scott Wu, have been named semifinalists for the 2012 U.S. Physics Olympics Team. They are enrolled in teacher Lai Cao’s Physics class and were named for the honor by the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). The U.S. Physics Olympics Traveling Team will be participating this summer in the 2012 International Physics Olympiad in Estonia, which will be an expensive undertaking.

About 3,000 students participated in the first phase of the selection exam process in January. Those students together with their physics teachers are listed on the web at http://www.aapt.org/physicsteam/2012/index.cfm [1]. About 300 top scorers on this first test will advance to the Semifinal Round of competition.

A second exam is used as the basis for selection of the 20 members of the U.S. Physics Team. In May, these students will travel from schools all over the United States to the University of Maryland-College Park for the U.S. Physics Team Training Camp. There, they engage in nine days of intense studying, mystery lab, daily exams and problem solving. At the end of that training camp, five students and an alternate will be selected as the "Traveling Team" to represent the United States at the Olympiad. In July, the Traveling Team and their coaches will attend a three day mini camp of intense laboratory work before moving on to Estonia.