In the Olympics of high-school physics, Men Young Lee ranked among the world’s finest last year. This year, he’ll try to take a second gold.
The 17-year-old senior at Alexandria’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology was once again among the handful of students selected to represent the United States in the International Physics Olympiad in July.
Lee, in between classes on Tuesday, had a surprisingly casual take on what many would consider a grueling 10-day ordeal of intense physics brain-busting, where last year he was among a small percentage of students to take gold. “I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t fun,” he said.
About 80 countries will compete at the Olympiad in Singapore, which will consist of equal parts laboratory work and paper-and-pencil problem solving, said Bernard Khoury, executive officer of the American Association of Physics Teachers.
Lee is one of the strongest contenders among the American students competing this year, Khoury said.
Though the competition is technically between students themselves, he said it naturally invites comparisons between nations. “We are a strong country internationally. We’re not typically the top one or two, but we’re in the top five or seven,” he said.
China, according to Khoury, is “far and away the best country overall,” and Iran, Germany, Great Britain, Iran and Eastern European countries typically make strong showings.
A Physics Olympiad
The International Physics Olympiad, which started in 1967 in Warsaw, will test the physics knowledge of students from around the globe. In America, five competitors and one alternate are selected from a pool of about 1,500 high-school students who are sent a preliminary exam and then the 200 who take a second exam.
Source: The American Association of Physics Teachers
