A group of potential high-fliers from schools around the country had their minds stretched earlier this week at the second annual Senior Physics Challenge for year-12 students held in Cambridge.

The 64 students came from around 60 different schools, both state and independent. The four-day programme comprised a mix of lectures, written tasks and practical exercises based in the Cavendish Laboratory on the West Cambridge site.

Run by Professor Mark Warner and Anson Cheung, the Senior Physics Challenge aims to encourage bright pupils to look beyond the school curriculum at what physics offers as a degree subject.

Anson said: “We saw the need for a rigorously academic programme that would give pupils a taste of the excitement of physics at undergraduate level. We hope to increase the numbers of students wanting to study physics at A level and beyond.”

Participants are nominated by their teachers on the basis of exam results, predictions, potential and subject interest. “What's encouraging is that this year we had three and a half applicants for every place – and we're hearing from schools all over the country,” said Professor Warner.

“The work we've been given on the Summer School is a lot harder than what we've been doing at AS. What's good is that it shows you the extent of what physics can do,” said Samantha Graham, 17, a pupil from Aylesbury High School in Buckinghamshire.

Iain Atkinson, 17, a pupil at Malbank School in Nantwich, Cheshire, said he had particularly enjoyed some of the hands-on activities such as experiments with angular momentum, using a friction-free chair and a bicycle wheel to demonstrate its conservation law.

Ten Cambridge academics contributed to the programme, tackling subjects ranging from Newtonian Mechanics to Special Relativity and special lectures on “Shock Physics” and “Physics of Toys”.

“One of the best talks was by Tadashi Tokieda, who showed us toys that seem to defy the laws of physics. He speaks four languages and is really cool,” said Christopher Jones, 17, a pupil at Cheltenham College who receives funding from the Ogden Trust.

Many of the Summer School pupils said they were considering applying to Cambridge to read physical natural sciences or maths.

“It was good to see some of the problems that you'd get as a first-year university student. The fact that I could do very few at first makes me twice as determined to get to the answers,” said Sarah Penington, 17, a pupil at St Helen and St Katharine School in Abington, Oxfordshire.

The summer school, which received support from the Ogden Trust, was free of charge to all participants. The pupils were hosted by six colleges: Downing, Corpus Christi, Newnham, Sidney Sussex, Robinson and Trinity Hall.

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