Hong Kong students win silver medals at 50th International Physics Olympiad in Israel

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Team of five secondary students received training from the HKUST and Academy for Gifted Education before the competition

Wong Tsui-kai |
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Five students representing Hong Kong won silver medals at the 50th International Physics Olympiad held in Tel Aviv, Israel. They are (from left) Chau Chun-wang, Lau Sze-chun, Gaurav Arya, Li Tat-sang and Jeff Kwan.

Five Hong Kong secondary school students have won silver medals at the 50th International Physics Olympiad, which was held last week in Tel Aviv, Israel.

The Hong Kong team prepared for the competition with an intensive training course provided by the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

In the final month before the event, the team trained for six to nine hours every day. Speaking to Young Post, Chau Chun-wang, of St Margaret’s Co-educational English Secondary and Primary School, said that he had not found his training schedule to be harsh.

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“I got used to it. Sometimes, we did experiments instead of papers,” he said. “The key is to not give up and to read relevant books.”

Gaurav Arya of King George V School said he enjoyed the test of his skills. “The most difficult question I had to answer was one about dropping a spring. Because of [its] internal motion, some parts of [the spring] defy gravity for a moment,” he said. “I’ve seen a video about this, [so] it was nice to [apply] physics I know to a problem that I’ve seen before.”

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Chun-wang and Gaurav were joined by Li Tat-sang of Sing Yin Secondary School, Jeff Kwan of St Paul’s Co-educational College, and Lau Sze-chun from Diocesan Boys’ School for the competition that was held on July 7-14. This is the second IPhO silver medal for Chun-wang and Gaurav, who also competed last year in Lisbon, Portugal. The pair also won gold medals at the 3rd International Olympiad of Metropolises in Moscow, Russia, which had been held in September last year.

“It’s the relationships you make at IPhO that are the best part of the experience,” Gaurav said of the event. “Like playing card games with the Singapore and Indonesia teams, or practising my Spanish with the Colombia team.”

Edited by Ginny Wong

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