By Helen Fallding

THE young Olympians training at the University of Manitoba this week are barely breaking a sweat.

Canada's top 29 physics and chemistry high school students are being whittled down to nine through this week's competition to create the national team that will be sent to international physics and chemistry Olympiads in Spain and Taiwan this summer.

The students' brains are getting a workout, but the training sessions also focus on developing skills in the lab, where one clumsy manoeuvre can create a mess.

"It takes a lot of precise use of your hands," St. John's-Ravenscourt student Jason Rosenberg said as he poured fluid into a small cuvette.

Yesterday afternoon, the students were learning how to measure the concentration of a solution by analysing the intensity of its colour with the aid of a machine hooked up to a computer.

Down the hall in the physics lab, students were repeating a century-old experiment that was key to Einstein's Nobel Prize-winning discoveries that laid the foundation of modern physics.

Kelvin High School student Rose Chang said she was originally drawn to chemistry because the labs were fun and students get to create "pretty colours" when they combine chemicals.

Rosenberg has already been offered a scholarship by the University of Toronto and will probably study biomedical engineering. Then he hopes to return to the University of Manitoba to become a doctor -- like his mother and grandfather.

Eventually, Rosenberg would like to research artificial limbs and help cure nerve diseases.

The students have several hours to perform each experiment. They concentrate intently, but Gord Parke of St. John's-Ravenscourt said the atmosphere is friendly.

Three of five Manitoba students who made it to this week's Olympiads on the basis of national exam results are from his Winnipeg private school, where science teachers offer extra coaching to the top students.

John Cullerne, who runs training for Britain's team, said students from state-funded schools just don't make it into the national competition there.

"There's a very big gap now."

He's in Winnipeg this week to get advice on how to involve universities in training high school students to help create a level playing field.

Trinity College, Cambridge, where the father of physics, Isaac Newton, worked in the 17th century, has offered to help.

The national Olympiads are being held in Manitoba for the first time.

A Canadian has never ranked top in the international competitions, but Canadian students are often in the top 10 per cent.

The Olympiads were started in the 1960s by communist countries, but Canada joined in the 1980s after the idea expanded to the West.

helen.fallding@freepress.mb.ca

PHOTO