Vanier College is proud to announce that first year Computer Science and Mathematics students Marco Alturk, Le Tuan Huy Nguyen and Justin Bax won the overall First prize worth $1250 at the McGill Physics Hackathon 2023, held on November 3-5. Their project, Singulario, took top honours from among more than 25 other projects created by 121 participants from local high schools, Cegeps and universities.
Not only did the Vanier team win first place, but they also won the People's Choice Prize worth another $300 when the other competition participants voted for Singulario as their favourite project of all the creations.
"Pretty good for a team that didn't want to compete. Our students thought they didn't stand a chance, but I told them, the real object was to have fun and learn something new.
Imagine their excitement when they won first place," said computer science teacher Alex Steinheuser Vilvert who constantly encourages his students to enter hackathons. The McGill event is a friendly computer programming competition. Over a 24-hour period, participants, in teams of 2-5 people, create a project that involves scientific computing and the physical sciences. There are no themes and the goal is to have fun and be creative.
To create a physics-based app, the Vanier team was inspired by Agar.io, a popular biological-based computer game simulating cell growth. "We wanted to create a visualization where n-bodies interact with each other with gravitational forces. In addition, we added a fun feature: eating other bodies and claiming their mass, and thus increasing your gravitational pull," explains the Vanier team.
What are they most proud of? "We were able to optimize our application and simultaneously display an impressive number of particles. Our end result is complete, functional, aesthetically pleasing and accurate."
Congratulations to Marco Alturk, Le Tuan Huy Nguyen and Justin Bax for such a creative first foray into physics and computer science.
