Speaker
Description
This presentation examines how the UBC Physics Olympics (https://physoly.phas.ubc.ca/) has evolved into one of Canada’s largest and most sustained physics outreach initiatives, directly aligned with the CAP’s mission to promote physics, support education and training, and strengthen the physics community. Each year, more than 80 teams from across British Columbia (often with multiple teams from the same school) participate, with each team comprising approximately 30 students. The event actively supports pedagogical innovation by engaging students in intellectually demanding, team-based challenges that include experimental laboratory tasks, Quizzics conceptual competitions, Fermi problems, and sophisticated pre-build engineering challenges prepared well in advance. New tools and approaches, such as smartphone-based investigations using Phyphox, are intentionally embedded to promote modelling, approximation, experimental design, and reasoning under uncertainty. Supported by over 80 volunteers, undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff, the Physics Olympics fosters sustained collaboration between physicists, physics educators, and teachers. Notably, many former participants have gone on to become physics students and secondary physics teachers, highlighting the event’s long-term impact on the physics education pipeline and the larger community.
| Keyword-1 | Physics outreach |
|---|---|
| Keyword-2 | Authentic physics education |
| Keyword-3 | Physics pipeline |