PhysicsBowl
- Editors of record from
- 1985
- Editors named
- 8Across four decades
- Longest tenure
- 2008–2017Michael Faleski
- Current editor
- Myra West
History
Four decades, eight editors.
AAPT keeps a public record of who has edited the PhysicsBowl, year by year, reaching back to 1985. It is a short document, and it is the most substantive thing that can honestly be said about this contest’s standing.
A named person has been responsible for the paper in every one of those years. That is unglamorous and it is the whole point: the contest has been continuously maintained by a professional body of physics teachers rather than assembled ad hoc.
The record
Editors of the PhysicsBowl
As published by AAPT. Where a tenure is given as separated years rather than a range, that is how AAPT records it.
| Editor | Years as editor |
|---|---|
| Jim Nelson | 1985, 1986, 1987, 1991, 1992 |
| W. Edward Gettys | 1988, 1989, 1990 |
| Mary Mogge | 1993–1998 |
| Courtney Willis | 1999–2004 |
| Richard Olenick | 2005, 2006, 2007 |
| Michael Faleski | 2008–2017 |
| Jon Anderson | Listed; years not stated |
| Myra West | Current |
Two features of that list are worth noticing. Jim Nelson returned to the role after a three-year gap, and Michael Faleski held it for a decade — the longest single tenure on record. Editorial continuity of that kind is what keeps a paper’s difficulty and style recognisable from year to year, which is precisely what makes past papers useful preparation.
How the contest changed
Five developments you can see in the record
Drawn from what AAPT publishes about the contest’s structure and its results archive.
The date moved earlier in the year
AAPT notes that the contest traditionally took place during March, and that the date has been moving toward the start of the month — the stated reason being to return results while schools are still in session. The window also stretches into April because spring breaks fall differently across schools, so a single fixed day would exclude some entrants.
International participation was formalised into regions
AAPT established seven regions specifically for Asia and the Middle East — codes 15 through 21 — covering China, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The results archive shows this: earlier years list the Asian regions as 15–19, later ones run to 21.
The equation sheet was substantially revised
AAPT records that the sheet handed to students has changed over time, with a concentration of revisions in 2008 and 2009. This matters directly to anyone working through older past papers: a paper from before that revision was sat with a different sheet in front of the student, so a question that looks unreasonably demanding today may simply have had its relation printed on the sheet at the time. Always practise with the current sheet, and treat pre-2009 papers as physics practice rather than as a faithful simulation of the exam.
The answer-sheet deadline shaped the window
The exam window exists because schools break at different times, but it is not open-ended: AAPT sets a cut-off for answer sheets to be received for scoring, typically the last day the contest may be administered. That deadline, rather than the exam date itself, is what ultimately closes a cycle — and it is why a school cannot quietly sit the paper late.
Delivery moved online
The exam is now distributed through Educational Vistas, as either a web-based online exam or a printable PDF whose answer sheets are scanned and uploaded. Older descriptions of the contest — including material still circulating — refer to a WebAssign-based route and to mailing physical answer sheets. That is no longer the current arrangement; see registration.
Why any of this matters to an applicant
A competition result is a claim about you that someone else has to interpret, often years later and often knowing nothing about the contest. What makes such a claim legible is not how impressive the contest sounds. It is whether the thing has a documented, continuous, institutionally-maintained record that a stranger can check.
The PhysicsBowl has that: a named editor every year for four decades, published rules, published papers with solutions, and published winners by region and division going back to 2012. Anyone who wants to understand what a result meant can look it up.
That is a genuine strength, and it is a different claim from the ones this site used to make. We do not tell you a result here leads anywhere in particular, because nobody can honestly say that — see about this site for how we handle that kind of claim.
One thing that has stayed constant: who may enter
For all the changes above, the contest’s eligibility has stayed deliberately wide. AAPT’s position is that any high school student may take the contest, and that anyone in K–12 could potentially take it. There is no qualifying round, no nomination, and no prior result required — a student sits it because their school enters them.
The division system does the work that an entry requirement would otherwise do. Rather than filtering students out, AAPT splits the field by how much physics has been studied, so that a first-year student is ranked against other first-year students. And because Division II is explicitly open to anyone who wants the harder paper, a student who has outgrown their year group is not held back by it.
That combination — open entry, but a structured field — is unusual among physics competitions, and it is the main reason this contest is often a student’s first. How it compares with the more selective olympiad route is set out on related competitions.