A group of eight students from Shenzhen Middle School won the gold medal at the 2016 United States International Youth Physics Tournament on January 31. It was the second time for the school to win the prize after its first championship in 2013. All of the open-ended projects studied at the competition are beyond the normal standard at high schools and have no definitive answers. Shenzhen Middle School is the only high school in China that has won the gold medal at the tournament. The competition this year attracted 11 top high schools in the United States and China, including Harker School and Philips Exeter Academy in the United States as well as the Middle School Affiliated with Renmin University of China and Nanjing Foreign Languages School in China. The Shenzhen Middle School team went through an intense two-day academic debate with the other teams in English about four physics projects that they had studied for a whole year. By winning the championship at this world-leading competition once again, the school showed its unique education philosophy based on problem solving. It also showed the students’ passion for exploring science and their great hands-on abilities, critical thinking skills and good teamwork. The school said that the team prepared for a whole year, from raising theoretical models to designing experiments, which greatly enhanced the students’ abilities to work and think like real scientists. (Zhang Qian) |