The Alpha Science Competition is an annual science competition hosted by the Doon School at their campus in Dehradun. Alpha 2025 consisted of three categories: the Engineering Challenge, the Clue Hunt and the Physics Fight. The Engineering Challenge and Clue Hunt categories were impromptu, conducted at the school without the teams receiving any prior information regarding them. The Physics Fight category involved the teams researching a given problem in advance, and presenting their findings in the form of a debate - teams were pitted against each other and had to both analyse each others fallacies, and hold their own against questioning.
I was part of the team representing Vasant Valley School at Alpha 2025. The Vasant Valley Team was the winner in the Physics Fight category, and was also the overall winner of the entire competition.
We were given the research problem: A can with a small mass glued to one face rolls unevenly or reverses. Investigate how the mass and its placement on the can affects the rolling motion.
To investigate this problem, after hypothesising and brainstorming, we built a comprehensive experimental setup.
To deal with inaccuracies, we 3D printed a cylinder to ensure the “can” had a more or less uniform mass distribution, and we developed a “force actuator” using a LEGO set to ensure the force applied every time to set the can rolling was constant.