Great Neck North wins LI Physics Olympics

A team from Great Neck North High School has taken the title in this year’s Long Island Physics Olympics.

The five-student team of Serena Chen, Julian Elihu, Aiden Jin, Jacob Levine and Zheng Zhou bested 14 other groups to win first place in the 39th annual competition, which was sponsored by the Long Island Physics Teachers’ Association.

Jericho High School won second place, and Smithtown High School East placed third.

The Physics Olympics included five events with multiple-choice questions that “challenged students’ knowledge and application of various physics principles,” according to competition officials. It was held in March at Farmingdale State College.

“All the kids on the team enjoy each other and they are intellectually fun-loving,” said the Great Neck team’s faculty adviser, Alan Schorn. “They all took Advanced Placement-level physics in the 9th grade, so as their teacher back then I’d like to think that contributed to their success as well.”

In addition to its overall win, Great Neck’s team won first place in the competition’s Fermi Questions event and second place in the Torque of the Town event. Fermi Questions required teams to “estimate quantities which are either difficult or impossible to measure directly,” while Torque of the Town required teams to “determine the mass of an altered measuring stick using torque,” according to competition officials.

GREAT NECK/STONY BROOK

Science Olympiad winners

Teams from Great Neck South Middle School and R.C. Murphy Junior High School in Stony Brook won first place among middle school groups in this year’s Western Long Island Regional Science Olympiad and Eastern Long Island Regional Science Olympiad, respectively. The contests challenged teams of up to 15 students to compete in about 20 events that tested learning, lab and building skills, according to competition officials.

The Western Regional consisted of 42 Nassau County teams, while the Eastern Regional included 33 Suffolk County teams.

Manhasset Middle School and P.J. Gelinas Junior High School in Stony Brook placed second in the Western and Eastern regionals, respectively.

ROSLYN

LI Math Fair

The Roslyn school district won 28 gold medals — the most of any school district on Long Island — in the 2025 Long Island Math Fair hosted by the Association of Mathematics Supervisors of Long Island. It was held in March at Hofstra University in Hempstead.

To participate, students in grades seven to 12 were asked to “submit a research paper and then present their findings to a room of peers and judges,” according to the association. This year, 569 students participated from 41 local schools.

Other top-performing districts and their gold medal totals: Herricks, 22; Jericho, 18; Syosset, 15; and North Shore, 14.

The Institute of Creative Problem Solving for Gifted and Talented Students at SUNY Old Westbury also won 14 gold medals.

UNIONDALE

Show choir runner-up

Uniondale High School’s Rhythm of the Knight show choir was named first-place runner-up at the Show Choir of America competition in Orlando hosted by FAME Productions in March.

Uniondale’s performance was themed around the 2018 superhero film “Black Panther,” school officials said. The show choir also won awards for best set design and best vocals, while senior Cadence Peace was named best female vocalist.

“The Rhythm of the Knight Show Choir continues to demonstrate the musical excellence we are proud to cultivate in the Uniondale School District,” Uniondale Superintendent Monique Darrisaw-Akil said in a statement.

By Michael R. Ebert

michael.ebert@newsday.com

Michael R. Ebert is an education researcher and has worked for Newsday in various capacities since 2003. He was part of an 11-person team named as 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalists for investigative coverage of the LIRR's platform safety issues.