Even with international champions in several STEM competitions and a resounding academic legacy, Iowa City West High School lacked a competitive physics club. This year, however, students and teachers worked together to create the F=MA Society, named after Newton’s Second Law of Motion, offering an outlet for students looking to apply their passion for physics and problem-solving in competitions.
F=MA aims to become one of the best physics clubs in the nation, mirroring the goals and prestige of the West High Math Club, which has won the state competition more than 20 times in the past 25 years. F=MA is looking to tackle four competitions this year, providing many opportunities for students to participate. Additionally, despite initial concerns that there would be a lack of interest, more than 30 students have signed up within the first month.
Brice Jensen, the faculty adviser of F=MA, is an AP Physics teacher at West. He worked with interested students to create the club, which he believes will “give students an opportunity to compete in physics” as well as pursue careers in physics-related fields and build critical thinking skills.
“I think having physics at West is pretty important,” Jensen said. “Not only to prepare students for post-secondary education, or maybe careers tangential to physics, such as engineering. I think it gives students more skills than that, in terms of a different way of problem solving, different challenges they might see in the real world, and how we can solve them with physics.”
Club President Ella Haim ’27 believes that the club will help her pursue a career in STEM and help her find fields she’s passionate about. “It’s just kind of more applications of physics,” Haim said. “I really want to be an engineer, and there’s a lot of physics involved with that and essentially everything you do as an engineer. So I’m really, really excited to see where my physics knowledge will take me in the future.”
Currently, Haim aspires to apply her physics knowledge as a Formula One engineer. “Being an F1 engineer is my end goal, so I feel that getting myself more involved with physics is super important for that specific career path,” Haim said. “And I feel like through physics club, I’ll be able to learn even more about physics than I do in the classroom, which is a lot already. I just feel like in ending up where I want to be career-wise, physics is a really important piece.”
To that end, F=MA has several competitions scheduled for the upcoming months. The F=MA Exam Feb. 12 is a standardized test featuring problem-solving questions in areas such as kinematics, energy and forces. Meanwhile, the Drake Physics Prize Competition consists of an application and a physics test held Feb. 27 and offers scholarships to Drake University as a prize for the first through third place finishers.
The University of Northern Iowa Physics Competition April 7 offers a more hands-on approach to physics. Participants will compete in events such as building the best catapult or flying machine. Lastly, the American Association of Physics Teachers Physics Photo Contest directs students to submit photos as “visual illustrations” of physics phenomena in action, accompanied by an essay detailing the pictured phenomena. Submissions will be open March 1 to March 15.
Although the club is still in its early phases, Jensen believes West’s academic excellence will help F=MA find success at the competitions this year. “It’s my second year here, and I just notice an academic culture that is more scholarly than you would see at any other high school in the state, or even nationally,” Jensen said. “We take our academics seriously. We’re excited about challenges.”
West’s STEM clubs have traditionally been very successful, and F=MA will seek to join the pantheon of state and national victors, which includes the aforementioned Math Club as well as the Technology Student Association, which recently sent more than 20 students to nationals in Nashville, and others.
When asked about the club’s prospects this year, Jensen said, “West High is going to crush every competition that we compete in.”
