Friends Academy junior Stefan Pappas is one of roughly 400 high school students in the country to have earned a qualifying score on the 2026 F=ma exam, the preliminary round in the selection process for the U.S. team that competes in the annual International Physics Olympiad.
“His intellectual curiosity, his willingness to work, and his patience with the difficulty in the process are all assets that permitted him to get to this spot,” says Mr. Don Fish, an Upper School science teacher. “It’s a really tough exam.”
The F=ma exam (named after Newton’s Second Law of Motion) is a 75-minute, 25-question multiple-choice test given in February that focuses on mechanics and doesn’t require calculus.
All qualifiers move on to take the USAPhO exam on April 10. This free-response exam is taken over a four-hour window and requires students to memorize derivations and justify their answers.
Based on those results, about 20 students will be selected to join the U.S. Physics Team and attend a training camp that will identify the six who will compete in the International Physics Olympiad this summer in Colombia.
Stefan, however, isn’t focusing on or worrying about the results. What he loves most about physics is working through the process to understand hard problems.
“When I’m preparing for something, I try to think as little about the outcome as possible,” he says. “If you’re too invested in the outcome, it can be an issue. Physics is such a fulfilling subject to me because it explains all types of physical phenomena. And it’s gratifying because you can go back into problems and understand them better. The other day I was looking over some problems I completely got wrong, and then I saw the correct solutions, and that was so enlightening to me. It’s really such a great subject because it teaches you how to think better and more rigorously.”
Photography by Alvin Caal / Friends Academy
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