Physics Photo Contest

Every year the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) holds a contest. The goal: take a photo that illustrates some physical phenomenon or concept in a compelling way. We will hold a local contest in parallel with AAPT. The winners of the GDS contest will be sent on to AAPT for the national contest. Here's the link to the AAPT webpage describing the contest. Check out prior winners, near the bottom of the page. Here are the rules. The explanatory paragrah should be at least 150 words, and less than 250. Deadline of the GDS contest will be May 8th. If you do research for your explanation, be sure to reference your sources.Submit photos and descriptive paragraphs to me by email. Your paragraph and references should be in the body of the email; send the photo as a JPG attachment.

Here are a few pointers:

Make sure the photo is in focus. If you are taking a close-up, use your camera's macro function if it has one. On many cameras the macro function is activated with a button or menu function with a flower icon.

Eliminate distracting unrelated objects from the background.

Shoot the photo with the highest resolution your camera has. Be sure to use a camera with at least 1 megapixel (1 MP).

For those of you you didn't do an extra credit earlier in the semester (attending the Astronomy Day talk or Just Say Know talk), you may submit two photos for the photo contest.

Here are the best of the GDS physics photo contest photos from 2009.