This year is the second that CQU's Dr Patrick Keleher has been a juror for the Australian section of the International Youth Physics Tournament, which serves to select the Australian team for the world event in Croatia during May.

(The Australian team won last year's competition in Seoul, Korea).

Dr Patrick Keleher, Associate Dean of the College of Engineering and Built Environment

Dr Keleher visited the Brisbane Girls Grammar School Centre for Science Research on March 14-15 to participate in judging.

He was among jurors drawn from physics academics from a variety of universities (University of Queensland, Southern Cross University and CQU), industry representatives, secondary school teachers and previous members of the Australian IYPT Team.

The CQU rep said he was impressed by the depth of theoretical knowledge, standard of experimentation and analysis and the degree of articulate and rigorous debate undertaken by the secondary school students.

"The competitiveness is fierce with plenty of excellence, exuberance and engagement about physics being exhibited," he said.

The competition is based on the Problem Based Learning philosophy, with predominately Year 12 students, working in teams of 3 to solve open-ended problems.

"During this time they need to establish themselves as an effective team, negotiate timelines and tasks and responsibilities, identify, understand and apply the physics principles involved, devise experimental tests, design or adapt experimental equipment, conduct their experiments and undertake the required analysis to devise a credible argument for the problem posed," Dr Keleher said.

Tournament participants

"The competition certainly puts the secondary school students through their paces. Even taking into consideration the senior physics topics they have covered at their schools there will be physics concepts, theory and experimental techniques and processes that they have not yet encountered in their secondary school physics curriculum. So it is a testimony to their intellect, ingenuity and dedication to learning and working as a collective that they perform so well in the competition."

The finals consisted of 2 teams from Brisbane Girls Grammar and a team from All Saints Anglican School. Spinifex State College was the team to travel the greatest distance - coming from Mt Isa. The 5-member team selected to compete in the 2008 IYPT competition in Croatia are Samantha luck, Ekta Paw, Kathryn Zealand, Georgina Roberts and Sara Thang.

The 2008 sponsors for the competition were Origin Energy and Queensland University.

Dr Keleher said that if any schools in the Central Queensland district were interested in learning more about the competition, or if any organisations were interested in sponsoring the event, they could contact him on (07) 49 30 9561 or p.keleher@cqu.edu.au.