Yesterday was the 27th annual Massachusetts New England Physics Olympics. This is a really Phun event where 10 teams from 8 schools competed in a variety of Physics Events. I had the pleasure of trying to coordinate this event, and I must first thank all of the BU undergraduates (and Mark Greenman, the Boston University Teacher in Residence for recruiting them) who helped all of us teachers in making the day run so smoothly!
BUA had a team of seven, with one 10th grader leading the squad (Remy), five 9th graders (Michael, Oliver, Evelyn, Dheekshita, and Nadia) and one 4th grader (Alejandro).
End of a long day
BUA Team, Michael, Alejandro, Remy, Oliver, Evelyn, Dheekshita, and Nadia
One of my favorite events this year was a variation of the Pictionary event. This was LEGO Bricktionary, where the cards had physics keywords, and the builder has to build something to represent that physics ideas and the other students had to guess. 
Michael from BUA builds items for LEGO Physics Bricktionary
Melrose in LEGO Bricktionary
Another LEGO event was called LEGO on a string. Students had to build a device from LEGOs ahead of the Olympics which would carry a payload down a string and drop the payload onto a target. The payload was a weighted LEGO brick.
Descent!
Thayer team in LEGO on a string
BUAers Remy and Michael with LEGO on a string
Another event was an Image Analysis event based on software developed at the Tufts CEEO
Physics experiments using Image Analysis
Another event was the Bottle Rocket Launching Event. Using a soda bottle filled with air as the source of propulsion, students had to build a paper rocket on location and launch it.
- Building the rockets
