The Israeli delegation performed impressively at the 16th Asian Physics Olympiad (APhO), held in Hanzhou, China, from 3 to 11 May. Israeli students garnered a respectable six medals – two silver and four bronze.

APhO, initiated in 2000 by Indonesia, is an annual international physics competition for secondary-school students in Asia. More than 20 countries and regions have participated in the competition since it began.

The competition is the regional prelude to the International Physics Olympiad, to be held in July. Qualifying teams from over 80 countries, including Israel, will gather to show off their theoretical and practical knowledge of kinematics, celestial mechanics, oscillators, Kirchhoff laws, the Lorentz force and other physics esoterica.

APho is considered one of the toughest regional physics competitions, especially as most Asian countries teach theoretical sciences such as physics in elementary school, so the Israeli team had plenty of competition stacked against it. Nonetheless, in an unofficial ranking based on the number and level of medals won, Israel came eighth in a pack of 23 countries, which included Turkey, Iran, Jordan and most of central and East Asia. The winning team was from China, followed by Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.