Bridgewater-Raritan Regional School District: Students Calculate Success

A team of 15 students from Bridgewater-Raritan High School made quite an impression in their first year as physics students.

So much of an impression that they finished second in New Jersey when Bridgewater-Raritan High School sponsored these 15 students to participate in the 2025 PhysicsBowl Contest.

The PhysicsBowl Contest is an international high school competition organized by the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT).

According to the AAPT, school teams compete regionally with other school teams by taking a 40-question, 45-minute, timed, multiple-choice test under their school’s supervision. Exam questions are based on topics and concepts covered in a typical high school physics course.

According to Dr. Eleni Arapaki, the AP Physics 1 and 2 Teacher at Bridgewater-Raritan High School, the exam was presented on March 28 at the high school. The team consisted of 15 students from AP Physics classes under Dr. Arapaki, Paul Wargo and Fangze Shang.

Bridgewater-Raritan delivered a second-place finish in Division 1 for Region 4, which consisted of schools throughout New Jersey

Bridgewater-Raritan was the runner-up to the Peddie School, while Pioneer Academy of Wayne was third and Northern Valley Regional High at Old Tappan finished in fourth place.

The AAPT developed Division 1 for first-year physics students.

Team scores for the school are determined by the sum of the scores of the top five students competing.

“Each Division has 15 regions that have been established across the country to allow schools in each region to compete against one another. Specialized math and science schools compete in their own region,” Dr. Arapaki said

The Bridgewater-Raritan High School students received certificates for their outstanding performance in the Physics Bowl.

“A big Thank You to Mike Herbst (Supervisor of Science 6-12) and the Science Department for sponsoring the team, and to Damian Storey, Assistant Principal) Jeanna Grapes and Jennifer Leob (Secretaries) for their support!

Here are the students who competed in the PhysicsBowl for Bridgewater-Raritan High School.

Piya Advani

Arjun Agarwal

Shiven Das

Marko Gvozdenovic

Shreya Gupta

Suyash Gupta

Jeffrey Hu

Harshit Kondle

Wesley Lin

Dhitika Madduri

Viraaj Marathe

Fisayo Ogunsulire

Hrishi Patel

Stephen Pikulin

Ethan Wei

The five highest performing scores that counted towards Bridgewater–Raritan High School’s ranking, from highest to lowest:

Wesley Lin, Suyash Gupta, Fisayo Ogunsulire, Ethan Wei, Jeffrey Hu, and Shiven Das. The last two students were tied.

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