Have you taken on the challenge of the British Physics Olympiad A2 challenge?

[nickbob00]

Not sure where this goes, but since it's an education thing, I figured here would be the best place.

Hi all,

I'm planning on sitting the British Physics Olympiad A2 challenge in a few weeks and I was hoping to see what people thought about it and see if anyone here is either doing it this year or has done it in a previous year.

It is a competition for able A level Physics students (age 17/18, A2/year 13), and the second paper is used to select candidates to go on and represent Britain in the International Physics Olympiad.

Here is the link in case anyone is interested, looks to be very difficult (considering this is intended for high school aged pupils, who will not have done any calculus based Physics at school -_-)
http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/olympiad/PaperBPhO.html

Nick

 

[FeDeX_LaTeX]

I am in Year 12 (16 years of age) and entering. I am also doing the AS challenge in early 2012.

 

[nickbob00]

Awesome, have you looked at the papers yet?

 

[FeDeX_LaTeX]

I haven't looked at IPhO or AS Challenge papers, but in the summer holidays I looked at Paper 1 (A2 paper). It doesn't seem as hard as BMO/IMO. The timing does look a bit difficult, especially because some 2-markers might take a bit longer than 2 minutes to arrive at the answer (thinking time). I haven't done a full paper yet, though.

 

[nickbob00]

Paper 1 is only a little harder than A level, Paper 2 is where it's at :P

 

[FeDeX_LaTeX]

Do we have to do Paper 2 as well?

Oh, that's why my sheet says 3 hours... apparently it can be split up into 1 hr 15 min and 1 hr 45 min, or a straight 3 hours if you want. I am assuming no calculus is required for Paper 2?

 

[nickbob00]

Paper 2 is distinct from paper one. Not sure if it explicitly requires calculus, but it probably helps :P

 

[FeDeX_LaTeX]

I should be preparing for this but I am not. Just let me finish this packet of crisps. Procrastination at its finest.

Anyone else doing this?