AT THE INTERNATIONAL PHYSICS OLYMPIAD, held in July, the US team had its second-best showing since it started competing in 1986, with 3 gold medals and 2 silver medals brought home by the 5 high school students who participated. In informal rankings, the US placed 3rd out of the 62 countries that competed, after Russia and Iran. Taking place this year in Padua, Italy, where Galileo discovered the 4 Jupiter moons named after him, the Olympiad contains two days of grueling theoretical and experimental problems amounting to what is the world's most difficult high-school physics test. For example, the students had to compute the precise trajectory of a space probe that uses Jupiter's gravity as a slingshot - a technique used in real-life spacecraft such as Cassini. Gold medalists included Peter Onyisi (Arlington, VA), who had the tenth highest overall score out of the approximately 300 competitors at the Olympiad, Benjamin Mathews (Dallas, TX), and Andrew Lin (Wallingford, CT). Silver medalists include Jason Oh (Baltimore, MD) and Natalia Toro (Boulder, CO), who earlier this year also became the youngest person (at 14 years of age) ever to win the top prize of the Intel (formerly Westinghouse) Science Talent Search. (More information at www.aip.org/releases/1999/release05.html)
