Ten Alachua County Public Schools students qualified this year for the United States of America Physics Olympiad (USAPhO) out of just 13 public and private high school students statewide. Eight students attend Buchholz High School, which had the third-highest number of qualifiers in the nation this year, and two Eastside High School students also qualified.
To qualify for the USAPhO, the students were among top scorers in the nation on a challenging exam called the F=ma, a 75-minute test with 25 questions focused on algebra-based mechanics. In the country, 333 of the highest-scoring students are now eligible to take another grueling exam covering a variety of physics-related topics, including mechanics, thermodynamics, relativity and nuclear physics.