Physics students represent the University of Kent in PLANCKS Competition

Physics Stage 4 student, Anthony Quinlan, took part in the PLANCKS competition for a second year in a row, alongside fellow Physics students from Kent

PLANCKS University of Kent

Here, Anthony shares the experience on their trip to Edinburgh, and announces some very exciting news!

“The Snails3 team returned to the Physics League Across Numerous Countries for Kick-Ass Students (PLANCKS); the international theoretical physics competition for undergraduate and masters students, this year at Edinburgh who hosted the UK preliminaries.

“Travelling by train on the Friday, the event started with a talk all about knots by the eccentric Dr Kristel Torokoff from the hosting university. That night there was a quiz and the winning team was made up of Snails3 members, this was the first of many inter-team events. The exam on the Saturday was four hours long, Kent placed 11th out of the 31 teams participating. The top three places went to Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial who will be representing the UK at the international finals in London this year. On the Saturday night, the organisers at Edinburgh had put on a Ceilidh, it was quite a sight to see nearly 80 very tipsy physics students butchering traditional Scottish dance routines but terrific fun and an excellent opportunity to network with other students.

“At the closing ceremony on Sunday, I announced that Kent would be hosting the preliminaries next year and welcomed all to come along. We hope to build off the success of PLANCKS in Edinburgh- making Kent 2021 the biggest and best preliminaries yet.”

We’d like to congratulate Anthony Quinlan and the Snails3 Team on their fantastic achievements and look forward to hosting the preliminaries in 2021!

The trip to Edinburgh was funded by the SPS PEC team – thanks to a pot of funding reserved for student events and activities that help raise the profile of the School and experience of our students. Unfortunately we are not able to offer any more funding for the 2019/20 academic year, but please do watch this space for an update heading into the next year.

 

Do you have a story to share? Contact spsmarketing@kent.ac.uk to feature on the SPS Blog.