This year’s science curriculum came with a new class – Advanced Topics in Physics… and it comes with a twist at the end of the year.

This is the first year that the Advanced Topics (AT) in Physics class is being offered. It is offered to seniors who are simultaneously enrolled in calculus. The class is taught by Xiao Zhang, Upper School Science teacher, and focuses on the topic of mechanics, the physics of motion.

The final exam for the class took place in the beginning of April, and from then until the end of school in June, the class will be dedicated for students to work on independent projects related to the class material. “The goal is to challenge students to learn something of interest on their own,” Zhang said.

Zhang’s inspiration for the project came in part from the variety of independent studies that Zhang has sponsored. Zhang sees independent studies as a good way for students to be able to explore their own interests and curiosities, and wanted to bring that to more students in the school. “The Advanced Topics Physics class gave me a chance to do this,” Zhang said. “I wanted to give seniors a chance to ask their own questions.”

The students in the class get to choose a topic related to the topics that they learned in the beginning of the year, and ask a question and attempt to answer it. Zhang places an emphasis on the importance of “asking questions and figuring out how to answer them.”

The students of the class are pursuing a variety of projects. “We have projects such as computer simulations, building rockets, … a telescope,” Zhang said. Senior Charlie Moog is enrolled in the Advanced Topics in Physics class and is has begun work on his independent project, a computer simulation of planetary motion.

“I thought it would be interesting to pick a few different physical phenomena which we had really delved into the mathematics of in class, and see if I could simulate those,” Moog said, “and maybe make a little pretty interface.” Moog feels that this class has provided him with an opportunity to practice valuable skills.

“I’m learning how to bring things together and make one cohesive project,” Moog said. “It’s kind of like a giant puzzle. It’s not like there’s one clear, obvious answer to these things.”

Senior Jenna Mansueto is working with classmate Olivia Garg to create a telescope that they hope will be capable of viewing planets with good clarity. “We are building first a simple Galilean telescope, and then we are building a more complex achromatic telescope,” Mansueto said.

Mansueto said that the class has provided her with an opportunity to not only delve deeper into topics, but also to develop research skills. “The research process has been a lot of trying to understand and immerse ourselves,” Mansueto said.

The projects created by the AT in Physics students will be graded based on a set of goals created by each student when they began their projects. “Each person agrees to goals to reach,” Zhang said. “One is to answer their question. The second is to see ‘how far can we go?’” The students will be assessed on whether they met their goals, such as having a successful and mathematically accurate simulation. The project will be taken into account for the end-of-year grades for the student.

According to Zhang, most graduate level science work is not simply learning from a textbook – it is finding the answer to curiosities and questions. And for him, the main goal of the project is to teach students “how to find the answers to questions that are not in a textbook.”