International Physics Olympiad Part II

On the olympiad side, Thursday was much like the preceding days. The main difference came in the form of an email from MIT, from which I quote.

Apartment/Room Assignment Confirmed: Two Bedroom Double Suite, Apt. 703C
Scheduled Occupancy Date: August 19, 2009

So, I now know where I'll be living in Cambridge, and when I can arrive. I therefore went looking for plane tickets. The best I could find was with QANTAS. I'll travel from Sydney to San Francisco on Monday 17 August, then spend a night in Berkeley (my plan was to see Heather, but I found out today that this won't work, so I'll be looking for people to see and somewhere to stay) before flying on to Boston overnight on the 18th/19th. I have also purchased a ticket from San Francisco to Sydney on Friday 25 June 2010, arriving Sunday 27th. I don't know whether I'll be able to use this, or whether that will be the best day, but it was my best guess, and it was cheaper to buy a return than to buy a single (literally!). The total cost was $1170.

I went to a travel agent (STA) to see if they could do any better. She found the same trip for $1540, although that would also include the BOS-SFO leg in June 2010. Given that I could get this for $210, and I don't want to buy it yet in case I can't use it on that particular date, I didn't think that was a great deal. I mentioned what I had found, but she didn't believe me, saying the best she could do was $1500 (and that the price I found must have been before tax, which I knew it was not). Naturally, I decided to go and buy the one I found.

On Thursday night one of our students was feeling quite sick; he had a bit of a fever. Alix (who was not travelling overseas) took him to the hospital, where they were assured he was fine to travel as long as he stayed as well rested as possible, and ~Panadol would be sufficient medication. Although Lucy and I were grateful that Alix took on the late night (I think it was 3am before they were back), our sleep was a bit disturbed as well - I didn't sleep between their return and our departure for the airport (or if I did, it was only for half an hour, and I dreamed that I was still awake!).

On Friday I made my third of five transpacific flights this year. The flight from Sydney to Los Angeles was a little rough, but arrived without incident. We had five hours waiting at LAX, and a much shorter time in Houston, before arriving in Merida around 9pm, 12 hours by the clock but 27 in reality after leaving Sydney.

Saturday was a free day: we had arrived in Merida one day earlier because the flights were cheaper. Matt (who had met us in Houston), Lucy and I wandered through the city and found the students at their hotel. They seemed to be dealing with their jet lag ok, and we wished them luck for the exams (although we knew we'd see them one more time first).

It was nice to meet some of the other leaders. We socialised mostly with the Israeli and Latvian leaders, but also spent a bit of time with others, especially those from English speaking countries. Food at the hotel was not terrible, but not great either. It wasn't Mexican, and was often a bit greasy, but never dropped below adequate.

Unfortunately, I woke at 4 on Sunday morning and couldn't get back to sleep. I guess it was jet lag, although that's strange because it was 7pm in Australia. The opening ceremony included the usual introduction of the teams, but it was simply by spotlighting their place in the audience rather than bringing them on stage. I didn't think this was as good (particularly for those who didn't win an award, because they wouldn't go on stage at either ceremony), but at least they did acknowledge everyone, and it certainly made the ceremony move quickly!

After lunch, we returned to our hotel to discuss the theory exam. The first question was about the recession of the moon from the earth due to the displacement of the tides, the second was about doppler cooling of atoms, and the third focussed on the temperature of stars. Overall, we thought that the questions were broken into too many segments, making the exam contain too little physical thinking. The students who would do well would be those who have good exam technique and don't make too many mistakes on the long questions. These are useful skills, but I don't think they're what the olympiad should be focussing on. Our sole attempt to remove a bit of information from a question to make it more physically challenging met with dismal failure.

We then began translating the exam, which took a little work but not too much. The term 'translating' might surprise some of you. For most countries, it does mean translating the exam from one of the official languages (English, Russian, Spanish or French) into their native language, while we simply have to improve the quality of the English. This sometimes does take some work; for example, in the experimental exam we spent quite a while arguing about the difference between a distance of some microns, measured accurately, and a distance measured to the accuracy of some microns.

We finished translating around 2:30am, and then had to print. To avoid last year's problem of too many countries and too few printers, the organisers had provided every country with a printer. Unfortunately, this meant that we were printing on extremely cheap printers, which required pages to be fed in one by one, and ruined almost one in three. The process of printing lasted another two hours, and I was in bed very late.