Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics

1141 North Lincoln Boulevard

Oklahoma City, OK 73104

Phone: 405/522-7806

Fax: 405/521-6442

Email: droberts@ossm.edu

For Immediate Release

May 4, 2006 Contact: Donna Roberts

Two Oklahomans Named to

United States Physics Team

The American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Institute of Physics have announced the names of the 24 young men and women who will make up the 2006 United States Physics Olympiad Team. Among those are two students from the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics.

Otis Chodosh a senior from Edmond, OK, and Haofei Wei, a junior from Broken Arrow, will join other team members from high schools across the nation at a training camp at the University of Maryland from May 19 through May 29, 2006. After ten days of intensive training, which will include instruction in laboratory and problem solving skills and lectures by prominent physicists, five team members will be chosen to represent the United States at the 37^th International Physics Olympiad in July, in Singapore. The Olympiad is an international competition among pre-university students from more than 60 nations.

“We attribute the success of these two exceptional students,” said Dr. Edna Manning, OSSM President, “to the strength of the physics instruction they received here at OSSM and in their home high schools, and to their own hard work and extraordinary dedication to their studies.”

Earlier this year, in its 2006 Advanced Placement Report to the Nation, the College Board named OSSM’s Physics C – Electricity and Magnetism course the strongest of its kind in the world. Both Chodosh and Wei have taken that particular course, as well as courses such as Physics AP, Modern Physics, Thermal Physics Waves & Optics, General Physics, Mechanics, and Electronic Circuits.

Wei attended Tulsa Union High School before being selected to attend OSSM for his junior and senior years. His parents are Xiaoguang Liang and Ming Wei of Broken Arrow. Wei is an accomplished trumpet player and was active in marching band at Union High School and participates in the OSSM Community Orchestra and in jazz band. Of his experience at OSSM he recently commented the he is “grateful for the opportunity offered to me by OSSM to participate in the Physics Olympiad, and also for the help and support I have received from the OSSM Physics Department faculty.”

Chodosh formerly attended ASTEC Charter High School in Oklahoma City. He is the son of Abi and Jim Chodosh of Edmond. He is an AP Scholar with Distinction, won the Caltech Signature Award and the Siemens Award for Advanced Placement, and last year was the captain of the OSSM team that placed first in national TEAM+S competition. Chodosh is an avid backpacking and mountaineering enthusiast, and participates in fencing. He was a goal tender with the Mid-America Ice Hockey League, a sport he hopes to pursue at Stanford University next year where he plans to major in physics or mathematics.