Mepham physics team dominates Olympics

Mepham High School physics teams have ruled the annual Physics Olympics, sponsored by the Long Island Physics Teachers Association, for the past 15 years. But this year’s squad set a new school record.

The team, comprising five students coached by physics teacher Bill Leacock, took first place overall, winning four of five events along the way. The students attributed their success to practice, hard work and the lessons they have learned from other high-performing Mepham teams.

Leacock said that nearly all of the students on the squad — Chris Juchem, Brian Keohane, Jane Kogan, Kevin Mendez and Matt Waldmann — have taken Advanced Placement physics. Each year Leacock asks students who excel in his classes to join the team, and he usually has no trouble persuading them to do so.

“We’ve usually won or taken second place overall,” he said. “They’ve been running away with it. Success breeds success, and they have fun, as it’s a really nice day.”

The 26th annual Physics Olympics were held recently at SUNY Farmingdale. The Mepham team scored 63.5 points overall, while the second-, third- and fourth-place teams earned 50, 49 and 48 points, respectively.

The Mepham squad members said they particularly enjoyed the Physics Bowl event. Mendez explained that the game show-style program required them to solve problems rapidly. Mepham dominated with a score of 20; the second-place team scored just 12 points.

Mepham also won the Pendulum of Doom contest, which Juchem said required the team to predict the horizontal range of a pendulum mounted on a table, released from a given height and cut at the bottom of the swing, becoming a horizontally fired projectile. Mepham’s projectile landed just .6 centimeters away from the predicted point, which Leacock noted was so close that even the judges were surprised by the team’s accuracy.