Oxford physicists head to PLANCKS international final

Second-year Physics undergraduate Andrei Eftime is a member of the Oxford team who took first place at this year's UK & Ireland preliminary round of PLANCKS - The Physics League Across Numerous Countries for Kick-ass Students, an international physics competition. The team, who call themselves 'The Fences', will now go forward to participate in the international finals in May, emulating the success of last year's all-Merton team.

Andrei's team-mates are Cristian Voinea (Corpus Christi), Sebastian Leontica (St Peters), and Radu Moga (Brasenose). With a score of 78, they were just ahead of two Cambridge teams - the Dark Fermi Gang on 75.5, most of whom were in the team which won last year's International Final; and Corpus Physti, who took third place with 62.5 marks.

This year's PLANCKS UK Preliminaries were organised by the University of Kent, with the event being held completely online. The contest consisted of solving ten physics problems in five hours. There were also various talks from top researchers, a virtual tour of CERN, and other activities, such as a quiz night. Despite being online, and therefore not getting to socialise as much with other teams, Andrei says it was definitely an interesting experience.