The International Junior Science Olympiad (IJSO) is an annual sciencecompetition for students aged 15 and under. Students are eligible to participate as long as they are less than 16 years old on December 31st of the competition year. It is one of the International Science Olympiads and an international academical competition that covers physics, chemistry and biology at the same time. The first IJSO was held in Jakarta, Indonesia in 2004. Around 50 countries send delegations of three to six students, plus one to three team leaders, and observers.[1]
The competition is broken down into three tests, each of which lasts between three and four hours. The theoretical portion consists of two tests: a multiple choice questionnaire consisting of 30 questions, and a theoretical test. The practical portion consists of three laboratory examinations, one for each field.[1]
Incidents
2020
Because of COVID-19, the 17th International Junior Science Olympiad 2020, originally planned to be held in Frankfurt, Germany, was cancelled.[2]
2021
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 18th International Junior Science Olympiad 2021 was conducted in a hybrid format. This allowed students from the participating countries to participate without travelling to the host country United Arab Emirates.[3]
2024
At the closing ceremony of 21st International Junior Science Olympiad 2024, 10 students that should have received a Bronze medal, mistakenly received a Silver and 10 students that should have received a Silver, instead were given a Bronze, but due to the only difference being the outline (Outline of a Bronze medal had a "pink bronze" look, and outline of a Silver looked gray-silver colored) no sort of escalation by either side followed at all.
Rareș Razvan Gheorghe (Romania) at 2024 IJSO, wearing a gold medal and holding his award for 2nd-highest score in Biology.
Upon arrival in the hotel, students are met by their coordinators and led to their rooms. They are also given some gifts. Those include: An IJSO backpack, water bottle and a T-Shirt, alongside various different items.
During the event, students and delegates are housed in separate hotels and get to meet each other on three occasions: Opening ceremony, cultural night and closing ceremony. After the opening ceremony ends, any electronics that can connect to Bluetooth are confiscated from students by the delegates (though they still maintain connection through the coordinator, who is in the same hotel with the students). This is done in order to prevent students from knowing the test questions in advance, which are given to delegates one day before the test for them to translate those to their native languages. As a result, students are given two question papers: One in English (Official), and one in their native language.
Cultural night
Team Georgia dancing at cultural night in 2024
Cultural night is on the same day as the experimental test. At cultural night, countries stage a performance related to their culture, mostly either a song or a dance of their choice, but participation is optional, so not many countries perform. In 2024, for example, only 16 out of 53 participating nations had a performance. Also, confiscated electronics are returned to the students on this day.
Closing ceremony
Closing ceremony involves giving roughly 60% of students a Medal (Gold to 10%, Silver to 20% and Bronze to 30%), but few also get a handful of special awards. Those being: The youngest participant (1 student), best scores in each subject (3 students for each subject), top-scoring group in experiments (3 groups), Top scorer in theoretical portion (MCQ and theory combined), (1 student), Overall (Absolute) winner and Country Winner.
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