Xiaoyu Xu of China earned the top score at this year’s International Physics Olympiad, which was held in Astana, Kazakhstan, from 13–21 July. Some 383 high school students from 85 countries competed.
The five-member teams from China, South Korea, and Taiwan each took home all gold medals. The top scores in theory and experiment went, respectively, to Cyuan-Han Chang of Taiwan (5th place overall) and Fan Francis Wang of Singapore (9th place overall). Do Thi Bich Hue from Vietnam was the top-scoring female competitor (16th place overall). The 44 gold medalists came from 17 countries. With three golds and two silvers, all US participants earned medals—as they have every year since 1999, except for 2002 when the team did not travel to the event in Indonesia.
On the US team, Calvin Huang of Palo Alto, California, earned a gold for the second year running; he is at the far left...
