Yavneh safe as houses as students come third in physics face-off

Ask a student to do their homework, vote or express themselves in anything other than grunts can be difficult. Ask them to crack a safe, however, and they suddenly spring into action, as was demonstrated on Sunday.

Student teams from across the UK lined up to pit their wits against each other in Weizmann’s second International Safe Cracking Tournament at UCL Academy, Swiss Cottage.

Ten teams were asked to design a safe that could be cracked by solving two physics riddles. Safes had to keep their peers stumped for at least 10 minutes but be opened by their creator in less than five.

Manchester’s King David School won top prize last year, but this year it went to Trinity College in Croydon, with Dulwich College coming second and Yavneh College in third. Among the ten participating schools were JCoSS with one team and JFS with two.

The Yavneh team (pictured) got into the 2014 Rio spirit, designing a safe with a World Cup theme with a table football style riddle.