A team of Secondary V physics students from Bialik High School in Côte Saint-Luc's District 2 are going to Israel to represent Montreal at the prestigious international Shalheveth Freier Physics Competition. The team, consisting of Matthew Creme, Bailey Cohen-Krichevsky, Michelle Miller, Ariel Sterlin and Sean Sukster and their coach, Bialik graduate Shawn Bramson ’08, bested competitors from other Montreal private high schools.
For months the students worked on building a safe using physics principles. This past February 23rd, Bialik’s squad, along with teams from St. Georges, The Study, Hebrew Academy and Herzliah High Schools, had to try to "crack" each others’ safes within ten minutes. Students were judged for their design and their knowledge of physics by representatives from McGill University and the Université de Montréal.
Under the stewardship of the school’s Director of Academics Judy Stein and their coach Shawn Bramson, Bialik students won the competition in 2009 and travelled to the Weizmann Institute in Israel for a short but intense visit made possible largely with support from the Weizmann Science Canada and LEARN Quebec.
Winning this competition in two of the last three years further evidences the high standing of the sciences at Bialik. This was keenly observed also last fall when Professor Mark Talesnick from Israel’s Technion University repeatedly remarked on how impressed he was with Bialik students and specifically their demonstration of scientific knowledge and curiosity. And, this he noted, after visiting many high schools in Montreal.
These wins also further validates what Arnold Cohen, President of JPPS-Bialik, recently wrote: “…when you choose our Jewish school you are choosing a school that measures up to any other private school in every respect, academically, socially, facilities, etc. with the added benefit of being Jewish-defining.”