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Six Upper Schoolers Honored in International Photo Contest

7/28/2015

Upper School science team members Cecilia Black, Annika Cederstrand, Aurora Hake, Jessie Ju, Cindy Liang and Angela Song received top 100 honors in the 2015 American Association of Physics Teachers High School Physics Photo Contest.

Students were tasked with creating visual and written illustrations of the physics behind natural or contrived situations. Out of more than 700 entries, 100 were chosen as exemplary. Typically, Annie Wright has one winner each year. Six in one year is unprecedented.

Congratulations Science Team!

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Cecilia Black: Distortion due to a convex mirror (in this case the horse’s eye) makes the image appear closer and smaller. With a true mirror your eye cannot tell that what you are looking at is a reflection and not reality, because it appears so similar. With a convex mirror, however, the distortion stretches and curves the reflection, reminding you that what you are seeing is not reality.
Annika Cederstrand: In this photo, a room of mirrors is being repeatedly reflected. The light in the room bounces off the present objects and hits the mirror. The mirrors then redirect the light back out, creating a reflection. When mirrors are parallel and facing each other, they create an infinite image which constantly repeats itself.
Aurora Hake: In this photograph, a building is being reflected in the glass wall of another building, visible due to the law of reflection. This principle states that the angle of incident is equal to the angle of reflection. In this image, the light that hits the glass building reflects at an equal angle to that of its origin, the building on the right. Due to reflecting on a glass surface, a building appears to be whole when in reality only one side is visible.
Jessie Ju: Light goes through water and it reflects on the stone; however, because the water surface is bowl-shaped instead of flat, the light reflects more on the lower part of the "bowl". Only at the bottom of the "bowl" can the light go in the right direction, according to the Law of Reflection, which states that the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection. Thus, on the stone, the reflection is dot-shaped instead of a whole reflection of the water.
Cindy Liang: The photo shows light shining through a water bottle. The shadow of the bottle is cast on the table and the wall. The denser the media, the slower the speed of light. In this case, light passes through the air and enters the water in the water bottle, which slows the light down. Illustrating the law of refraction, the light rays are bent in different directions that magnify everything in the water bottle. The light exits the water bottle and bends the direction of the light again.
Angela Song: I dipped a straw in soapy water and blew a bubble. The oily film is separate layers of soap attached to hydrogen-bonded water. I then blew a bubble inside the original bubble. By doing so, I increased the volume of air inside both bubbles; water’s hydrogen bonds are strong and elastic enough to let this happen. When I repeated this, the quadruple bubbles reflected the lights from the ceiling.

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News Detail

Six Upper Schoolers Honored in International Photo Contest