Despite not doing “anything special to prepare,” said upper school physics teacher Eric Nelson, Harker nonetheless managed to perform impressively in the 2011 Physics Bowl, organized by the American Association of Physics Teachers.

Ashvin Swaminathan, grade 10, was one of the top 10 scorers in his region for the division 2 (advanced) category with a score of 31, nearly 15 points higher than the average score of 16.4. Harker was also one of the highest-scoring schools in its region in the division 2 category, with 130 points.

More than 4,000 students from more than 200 schools in the United States and Canada participated in this year’s competition, which also had participants from China, Japan and Korea.