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High Schooler Sets Physics World Abuzz

issac newtonA 16-year-old German high school student has written a paper that purports to have solved two mysteries that were beyond the intellect of the great Isaac Newton.

Shouryya Ray, an Indian-born student who won second prize this month in the math and informatics category for Germany's Jugend Forscht student science competition created formulas to answer the following questions that have puzzled scientists for centuries:

How do you account for air resistance in calculating the trajectory of ball thrown out at an angle?

Precisely how does a ball thrown against the wall rebound?

Because Ray's paper was a school-based project and was submitted for a contest, it is not subject to the publication process and peer review that professional work typically goes through. That has led some experts in the field to reserve jugement of the work until they've seen it for themselves.

However, everyone who has commented about Ray's paper has said it is an achievement that very few high schoolers could duplicate.

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