Tonbridge School Wins UK Safe Cracking Competition
After a few years of hosting our UK Physics Tournament online, on Sunday 5 February we were finally back in person at Dulwich College! A team of Year 12 safe crackers from Tonbridge School are the winners of Weizmann UK’s eleventh annual physics tournament. It was a close competition with a total of 18 teams.
Over 120 Year 12 students from 13 schools across the UK competed to break into securely locked devices by pitting their physics knowledge against each other.
Teams were tasked with designing a safe which could be cracked only by solving two physics riddles. Each team had to be able to open their own safe in under 5 minutes, but needed to keep their opponents stumped for at least 10 minutes.
The teams were competing to win a travel grant to enable them to take their safes to the next level: the International Safe Cracking Tournament at the Weizmann Institute of Science, which will take place in Israel at the end of next month, March 2023.
Judging was followed by an exhibition where teams could present their safes to their peers.
The UK competition winners were:
1st place: Tonbridge School – Currently No Current
2nd place: Dulwich College – The Tea to Success
3rd place: Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys School – Sherlock Ohms
The competition was judged by a panel of experts including Science Communicator Thomas Briggs; Storm Rae, Head of Education at the National Museum of Computing; Weizmann Alum Lee Peleg, currently based in the UK but working in the lab of Prof Roee Ozeri at the Weizmann Institute of Science; and Phil Deakin, former Head of Science at Tonbridge. Also on the panel was Adi Jacobson, who is an alumna of Weizmann UK’s Dr. Bessie Lawrence International Summer Science Institute. We also had three young PhD students from the Weizmann Institute - Gavriel Fleurov, Meirav Pinkas and Noa Yaffe.
The Weizmann UK Safe Cracking Tournament is CREST accredited and students who take part can use their work to gain a Gold CREST Award, which is recognised by both UCAS and the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme. The CREST scheme is run by the British Science Association and accredits science, technology, engineering and maths activities for young people.
List of Participating Schools for the 2023 UK tournament:
City of London School for Boys, Colchester Sixth Form College, Dulwich College, Eltham College, Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys School, Ibstock Place School, JFS, Sevenoaks School, South Hampstead High School, St Paul's School, The London Academy of Excellence Tottenham, Tonbridge School & Westminster School.
