Cambridge Physics Challenge Success

When most Bancroftians are taking part in the Being Bancroft’s Festival at the end of the term, one hard-working L6 student will be heading up to Cambridge for activities of a different sort.

Arjun has earned himself a place on the prestigious Senior Physics Challenge summer school in the first week in July. This is a programme funded by the DfE with the goal of boosting physics and problem-solving skills, and students selected are those who have completed the most problems on the Isaac Physics system. Arjun has completed hundreds of these questions, including some incorporating university level physics.

He is not alone, two students were selected for this scheme last year, and this year several of our students were awarded prizes for their Isaac completion. Anish and Bradley both received Diamond awards, which place them in the top 100 in the country, and Zayyan and Arnav had Emerald awards, which place them between 100 and 150 of the thousands of users of the system.

Arjun had this to say about his work, ‘I started with the easier ones and towards the end worked up to learning new ideas and doing further A and University questions. Even when the questions got difficult they always felt incredibly rewarding to solve and it was very satisfying struggling through the insanely challenging questions and finally finding the answer.’

Bradley says, ‘I’ve explored some topics that haven’t been covered yet, and some that might not be part of the A Level course at all, so it’s been fun to expand my knowledge. It was also quite fun when I would learn a topic in class when I had already seen a problem about it before which I didn’t know how to solve yet and making the connections when I was learning it in class.’

We are so proud of these students, and all those who are pushing themselves beyond the syllabus.

The Isaac Physics programme is a great way to develop one’s physics skills, so it is great to see our students being rewarded for their hard work!