Success at the McGill Physics Hackathon
On the weekend of November 4th and 5th, three second-year Vanier students, Teresa Altamirano Mayoral, Diego Lopez, and KC Tsiolis, along with Mara Boureanu from John Abbott College, finished in 4th place in McGill’s Physics Hackathon, held at the “Société des arts technologiques (SAT)”. The teams participating in the hackathon (most of which were composed of university students) had 24 hours to create the program that simulates a physics phenomenon.
The 4th place finishers impressed the judges with The Physics Playground, a program similar to Microsoft Paint that simulates the motion of charged particles in an electric field (which also happens to be one of the first concepts taught in the Electricity and Magnetism class here at Vanier). They were invited to present in the dome of the SAT in front of all of the participants, judges, and organizers. The version of the program presented to their audience in the dome can be found at this link:
https://symmetries. github.io/physics-playground/
The three Vanier students from the team are part of the Vanier Tech Club, a club for students interested in computer programming, application development, artificial intelligence, and computer science. It sends its most active members to hackathons multiple times a semester and has already had one of its teams win at the Université de Montréal hackathon earlier this year. Right now, its big project is to participate in Vanier LaunchBox, which supports innovative community-oriented student projects. The club’s goal to create an application that uses machine learning to help students with their Math homework. For more information on LaunchBox, visit Ashley Rankin in her office at TASC, and for any inquiries about the Tech Club, send a Mio to Teresa Altamirano Mayoral. Newcomers are always welcome to the club and no prior programming experience is necessary.
Written By: KC Tsiolis
