From Harker Middle School to USAPhO

I am a Harker dad and used to teach Physics and Math to first- and second-year college students during my Theoretical Particle Physics Ph.D. program at UCLA. I have received the UC Teaching Excellence Award from the Provost of the University of California.

Earlier this year, I started preparing some Harker seventh and eighth graders for the F=ma exam, the first test for the United States Physics Olympiad (USAPhO). Eleven Harker middle school students participated in the 2022 F=ma exam on February 10, thanks to Ms. Peng, the Harker Middle School Science Department Chair proctoring the test. They solved between 2 and 7 problems out of 25 problems provided to solve in 75min.

As was expected, due to the short preparation time (only three 1-hour zoom sessions) and the fact that F=ma exam participants are usually 9th to 11th graders, none got a minimum of 16 required to be one of 400 out of 6,000 yearly participants to get invited to the USAPhO summer camp.

We plan to create a community of students, HarkerUSAPhO, of current Harker middle students to become among the youngest to move to the USAPhO level nationally in their 8th or 9th grade by beating 16, the minimum to qualify needed to qualify.

Here is a HarkerUSAPhO plan:

• HarkerUSAPhO is open to all current 7th or 8th graders (, including those who participated earlier. The only requirement is to participate in the weekly sessions actively.
• There are American Association of Physics Teachers fees for the team registration ($250 for school that I covered and $10 per kid that parents covered.) This year there is a chance that Harker kindly covers the fees.
• HarkerUSAPhO will start on Thursday, April 14, from 5:15 PM to 6:15 PM and continues on a weekly basis. This time slot is after many sports and other activities on Thursdays. I have had many discussions with parents, and basically, there is NO time suitable for all and I can cover. All sessions will be recorded and become available.
• I have created a plan for about 30 sessions. We have about 44 weeks till 2023 F=ma. So after having 14 weeks off on holidays, we should have room for the 30 sessions. Sessions are primarily on Zoom. We will plan a few sessions in school to have the team meet depending on the availability of places to meet in the school. We will have room for a maximum of 40 students to be able to have reasonable participation of all students. We expect to get between 20 to 30 interested students to register.
• HarkerUSAPhO uses TeamSnap to create a community of kids helping each other solve challenging problems and reach out for meeting schedules and other activities.
• The F=ma problems are very thought-provoking. Each one has problems from easy to challenging, so all levels are covered. The math requirement is Algebra (i.e need to have taken Algebra. Calculus is not needed.
• I run HarkerUSAPhO sessions in a “flipped” fashion: I will share video links for kids to see before the sessions. We will have one student lead solving each problem of precious F=ma tests in the sessions, and others will help. I will rotate among ALL of the students. It is not about if they know how to solve each problem. It is about learning how to think about finding a solution and collaborating with others to find the answer. So the Zoom sessions are mostly lively discussions on creative problem solving and are NOT lectures.
• HarkerUSAPhO participants should be committed to attending the one-hour per week sessions and put between 30 minutes to 1 hour each week to watch the assigned videos and/or solve some sample problems. Participants need to be driven, self-learners, and love creative problem-solving. This is all about having fun seeing the beauty of how math explains and predicts real life.
• HarkerUSAPhO weekly sessions will focus on fundamental concepts of Physics that appear in F=ma exams. This includes Kinematics, Dynamics, System of Mass, Gravity, Energy, Collisions, Rigid Bodies, Fluids, and Oscillatory Motion, all at the algebra level. The F=ma exam does NOT include Electricity and Magnetism, Quantum Mechanics, or Relativity. These more advanced subjects will be included in the next level of USAPhO.
• Some of the above subjects are covered in the Harker middle school science. Some are covered in the Harker high school courses. And some are not covered in the Harker curriculum. We will cover most of the subjects related to the previous F=ma exam questions as much as time permits.
• I am also planning to show the simulation of one of the problems each week through Computational Physics. Students will have the option of building a computational simulation of any problem they like. This helps the students deeply understand the physics equations from a computational point of view: looking at nature as a large distributed computer constantly computing and stimulating the physics laws!

Here is the registration form. Pls, submit this by April 15.

Please send your suggestions on improving HarkerUSAPhO or offering your help in making it happen to amir@letsmod.com.