A Physics Bowl

It can be hard to create SPS activities that fully engage students of all levels, from seniors taking graduate classes to first years who haven’t yet completed their introductory courses. As a physics society, we must also balance academics with just the right amount of shenanigans. Our chapter strives to ensure that everyone, no matter their academic background, has tremendous fun at University of Southern California (USC) SPS events, sharing their passion and curiosity for physics. We’re thrilled that our most recent new event, the Physics Bowl, accomplished these goals.

Last year, leaders of USC’s SPS chapter and Quiz Bowl Club decided to collaborate on a physics-based quiz bowl. Thus began the process of planning logistics, writing questions, and marketing. We methodically advertised the event for several months through social media accounts, our mailing list, artful posters around campus, and Blackboard announcements to physics classes.

For months we held weekly question-writing meetings armed with sample physics GREs, questions from past science olympiads and quiz bowls, trivia sources, and, of course, boundless creativity. We didn’t shy away from theory or calculation questions, but we wanted to make the event fair and inclusive for all levels. To do that we included a healthy dose of physics history questions and others related to our esteemed physics faculty. For comic relief, we also scoured the web for the best physics-themed internet humor.

These sessions, filled with academic shenanigans, became excellent bonding opportunities, cherished memories, and our favorite part of planning the Physics Bowl. Three months and some 200 questions and memes later, we were ready!

The evening of the Physics Bowl greeted us with gray clouds and rain—but that didn’t deter eager competitors from showing up to duke it out in our grand arena: Stauffer Science Lecture Hall 200. As a STEM event, we were culturally obligated to provide pizza and drinks before the competition began. After our pizzavaganza, it was time to start.

Our SPS director of internal affairs, Ajay Srinivasan, emceed, while experienced quiz bowler and USC SPS member Noel Abraham directed the buzzing. The bowl was an ad hoc, round-robin tournament, designed so that the six teams could participate twice, with subsequent matches to determine the final rankings.

Fast-paced buzzer action ensued, set to our president Dwaipayan Chanda’s personally curated hype song playlist. As the cymbals in Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” landed, the first two teams took their seats on the stage. Over the next nail-biting 15 minutes, they raced to answer questions on topics ranging from Richard Feynman’s Erdős-Bacon number to applications of the Biot–Savart law.

After the first matchups, the music switched to “The Final Countdown,” and the question difficulty slowly ramped up. Nearing the final rounds, we moved from multiple choice to short answer questions, with plenty of opportunities for opposing teams to “steal” questions. If both teams were stumped, audience members guessed. That made the Physics Bowl truly a community event.

As we ran out of songs from Dwaipayan’s playlist, our evening came to a close. Team Osmanthus Wine had a glorious win in the final round. (“The Final Countdown” would have been a great song for this round. Instead, our president played “I Love You” from Barney & Friends. We stand by this choice.)

Given its popularity and how much fun people told us they had, we plan on making the Physics Bowl an annual event. People have even floated the idea of collaborating with nearby SPS chapters on an intercollegiate Physics Bowl! Looking ahead, we hope to make this event, rife with academic shenanigans, an eagerly anticipated tradition.