Description
Participants have almost a year to work on 17 open-ended inquiry problems [2] that are published yearly in late July. A good part of the problems involves easy-to-reproduce phenomena presenting unexpected behaviour. The aim of the solutions is not to calculate or reach "the correct answer" as there is no such notion here. The Tournament is rather conclusions-oriented as participants have to design and perform experiments, and to draw conclusions argued from the experiments’ outcome. [3]
The competition itself is not a pen-and-paper competition but an enactment of a scientific discussion (or a defence of a thesis) where participants take the roles of journalist reporter, opponent, and reviewer, learning about peer review early on in their school years. Discussion-based sessions are called Physics Fights and the performances of the teams are judged by expert physicists. [3]
Teams can take quite different routes to tackle the same problem. As long as they stay within the broadly defined statement of the problem, all routes are legitimate and teams will be judged according to the depths reached by their investigations. [3]
The IYPT is a week-long event in which currently around 200 international pre-university contestants participate. [3]
IYPT is associated with The European Physical Society (EPS) and in 2013, IYPT was awarded the medal of The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) "in recognition of its inspiring and wide-ranging contribution to physics education that has touched many lives and countries, over the past 25 years". [4]
Tournament structure
The most important structural parts of the IYPT are the physics fights. There are five selective fights, and one final fight for the top teams at the end. The structure of these Fights can be compared to the group phase of a football competition (e.g. FIFA World Cup).
Each fight consists of 3 (or 4) stages. In each stage, every team in a given Fight room has one role of the following: reporter, opponent, reviewer, and observer (if there are 4 teams in a Fight). During the 3 (of 4) stages, they "rotate", so that every team has all the roles exactly once, represented by the following tables:
Three-teams Physics Fight| Stage | 1 | 2 | 3 |
|---|
| Team 1 | Rep. | Rev. | Opp. |
| Team 2 | Opp. | Rep. | Rev. |
| Team 3 | Rev. | Opp. | Rep. |
Four-teams Physics Fight| Stage | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|---|
| Team 1 | Rep. | Obs. | Rev. | Opp. |
| Team 2 | Opp. | Rep. | Obs. | Rev. |
| Team 3 | Rev. | Opp. | Rep. | Obs. |
| Team 4 | Ops. | Rev. | Opp. | Rep. |
The following table represents the structure of a single Stage:
Stage regulations| Event | Duration | Reporter | Opponent | Reviewer | Jury |
|---|
| The Opp. challenges the Rep. for the problem | 1 min. | | active | | |
| The Rep. accepts or rejects the challenge | 1 min. | active | | | |
| Preparation of the Rep. | 5 min. | | | | |
| Presentation of the report | 12 min. | active | | | |
| Short questions of the Opp. to the Rep. and answers of the Rep. | 2 min. | active | active | | |
| Preparation of the Opp. | 3 min. | | | | |
| Opp. presentation | max. 4 min. | | active | | |
| Discussion | 10 min. + remaining time from the Opp. presentation | active | active | | |
| Summary of the Discussion | 1 min. | | active | | |
| Questions of the Rev. to the Rep. and the Opp. and answers | 3 min. | active | active | active | |
| Preparation of the Rev. | 2 min. | | | | |
| Rev. presentation | 4 min. | | | active | |
| Concluding remarks | 2 min. | active | | | |
| Questions of the Jury | 5 min. | active | active | active | active |
In the last Selective PF and in the Final PF the procedure of challenge is omitted.
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