Cary Academy took 3rd place in the prestigious United States Invitational Young Physicists Tournament (USIYPT) in January 2018. Teams of students from schools around the world had been working on complex problems for a full calendar year and joined together to share and defend their research. 

This year, teams of students worked on Moon’s Orbit (Robert Schellenberger and Vincent Wang with help from Rachel May and Abe Weinstein), Electromagnetically Coupled Mechanical Oscillators (Cameron Fisher and Abe Weinstein with help from Obinna Modilim), Projectile Motion Through the Air (Josh Pullen, Ross Matton and Ben Humphries with help from Scott Matton, Will Aarons, Felipe Chiavegatto, Aidan Sher, and Saajan Patal) and Incandescent Light Bulbs and Blackbody Radiation (Maggie Hayes with help from Christian Sodano and Paul Ibrahim).    

The competition on these undergraduate-level physics questions involves both presentation and defense of CA team research but also understanding and discussing the research presented by other schools.  Maggie Hayes (team captain), Robert Schellenerger, Josh Pullen and Abe Weinstein ably presented and defended their work at the competition, but it is truly an effort of the whole group, as no single person could possibly complete a project of this magnitude alone.

USAYPT’s goal is to improve teaching and learning by promoting research at the high school level.  This was the third year that Cary Academy has been invited to participate. The team was started by US physics teacher Matt Greenwolfe, with support from faculty members Dick Mentock, Robert Coven, and Rachel Atay.