Here we go: Full coverage of the final’s of IYPT 2012. Have fun watching!

Just like back in 2010, here are some notes and pictures taken during the finals: The teams of Korea, Singapore and Iran are getting ready! First we’ll hear WuHyun Sohn from Korea with his report on Problem 1. Gaussian cannon! President Alan Allinson is asking everybody in, the Stadtforum Bad Saulgau is completely filled, everything is prepared and the teams are getting ready! Introduction of the teams: Three former participants in the Jury: Ilya, Martin and Kathryn: Korea’s report hast more…

I’m pretty sure you all like numbers a lot. Even more so if they’re used to count stuff: We printed and scanned about 1000 Scoring Guidelines, almost as many A4 pages with results and previews and another 900 pages of the report on the problems for 2013. There were 18 Beamers in use in the fight rooms, another two in our IT department, and about 5 spare. The fight assistants double checked every grade, we then again checked whether the more…

Just in case you haven’t heard yet: We’ll have a final of three teams, namely Korea, Singapore and Iran. They will now select their problems for tomorrow. Detailed results are available as usual here: http://results.iypt.org/IYPT2012/

Some have asked already whether they can get the clock. sure it’s open source (GPL3) and available here: http://intern.sfz-bw.de/~simeon.voelkel/gentoo/iyptclock-latest.tar.bz2 If you prefer something browser-based, here’s a clock Georg and I designed (also open source, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0): https://newtoon.iypt.org/init/static/clock.svg

This shows which problems were challenged. Red shows rejections, the numbers count how often they were accepted. oh, and seeing this graph, here’s one from our server, showing the traffic to and from the server that hosts iypt,org, newtoon, and the results:

First results are in. They can be found at http://results.iypt.org/IYPT2012 and the scanned Scoring Guidelines that include the partial grades are available here: http://results.iypt.org/IYPT2012/SG/ Update: The previews for round 2. Overview for Round: 1 Rank Team TSP = 1 Korea 44.7 = 44.7 2 Singapore 40.1 = 40.1 3 Russia 38.7 = 38.7 4 Slovakia 38.5 = 38.5 5 Chinese Taipei 38.1 = 38.1 6 Switzerland 37.2 = 37.2 7 Belarus 36.7 = 36.7 8 Austria 36.5 = 36.5 9 Georgia 35.5 = 35.5 10 Germany 35.4 = 35.4 11 Iran 34.8 = more…

Hey! We’re done with both the schedule for the teams (based on the drawing of lots) and the jury distribution (based on the team’s schedule). We did it in record time. Hopefully with a record minimum of mistakes too Here is the schedule, based on the drawing of lots and here we have the Jury Schedule.

The LOC must have been busy in the last few weeks: There are smaller and larger hints that the IYPT takes place in Bad Saulgau literally everywhere – here’s a few of them that I photographed so far: I was especially excited to see little exhibitions showing former IYPT problems, posters and experiments in the display-windows of local shops. I guess that’s the main advantage that a small city like Bad Saulgau has to offer – everyone including the city’s more…

A mascot, according to wikipedia, is “any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck”. Even though you’d expect these young physicist to despise the notion of luck, many teams have mascots, some already for many years. Probably the reason for that is the second meaning wikipedia gives: “anything used to represent a group with a common public identity”. So who are the brave mascots that “represent” some of the IYPT teams? Well, the first one I met was “Schrödigger more…

The tournament officially starts when Alan Allinson opens it this Saturday. But for me the start is leaving home (though I must admit going from Graz to Bad Saulgau for the third time now is not too exciting any more) and switching to that deep IYPT mode, were everything else slowly fades away. Teams from all around the world, preparations, fights, sleep deprivation – it’s a very special blend of topics, feelings and impressions every year. Next time i’ll write more…

At the core of the IYPT there are the 17 problems that the teams work on for almost a year. They have been repeatedly credited as source of ideas for laboratory tasks, thematic activities in schools, graduation research projects, or even everyday physics teaching. They look like this one from 2012′s set: “A long string of beads is released from a beaker by pulling a sufficiently long part of the chain over the edge of the beaker. Due to gravity more…

There’s always something special about the finals: It’s the time to give your peak performance. There’s an audience of your peers who all have worked on the problems you present, who are experts in what you report. Twice as many jurors who watch. All of them experienced, some of them university professors, some teachers, some are former participants. You get a microphone and a stage – and sometimes, there’s even a camera or two looking at you: 2009: 2010: 2011: more…

As promised last time, let’s think about the grading itself a bit. Back in 2010, without the help of our new Scoring Guidelines , the distribution of grades looked like this: The diagram, like this description taken from Ilya’s archive, shows the distribution parameters (population mean and standard deviation) for grades of individual jurors at the 23rd IYPT (2010.) The grades are averaged across all stages, performances, and PFs. The data clearly reveals that the individual grading standards vary among more…

The Scoring Guidelines were introduced at the IYPT last year in Iran. Martin Plesch actually gave an in-depth introduction that I made a video of, so in case you’re interested: Now of course this wasn’t something that the Executive Committee came up with during one of their short meetings. It really was a long process that eventually led us to what I consider a very reasonable and helpful guideline for both new and experienced jurors. As the minutes of the more…

Hey! Not sure if I can keep up with writing this much for our blog – but then again there is a lot to say about IYPT: Our website has some information, a bit about the history for example. Then there is the excellent wikipedia article. The most impressive collection however is the work of Ilya Martchenko, located at archive.iypt.org: A massive archive dating back to 1979, including presentations, slides, papers and articles written for or about the IYPT. And more…

I like numbers and comparing things – that’s something I probably share with many IYPT participants. With newtoon we’ll have all sorts of stats about the tournament itself. But for now – let’s collect some facts and numbers about the IYPT 2012: It’s the biggest IYPT ever, with 28 different nations participating. But is Bad Saulgau the smallest city that has ever hosted the IYPT? One might think so, having had the IYPT in cities like Tehran, Vienna, Tianjin or more…

Yes, finding a suitable acronym for this piece of software Georg, Wolfgang and I have been working on since January proved a first challenge. About 350 person-hours and >500 commits to our svn repository later we’ve completed what might well become the backbone of most future YPT competitions. Newtoon replaces the old java software Georg wrote about a decade ago, countless excel-sheets former LOCs have used and adds many new features: Fight assistants will have their own account and can more…

Hey! I’m Tim, former IYPT participant, former IYPT Executive Committee member, 2010 LOC member, iypt.org webmaster and lots of other ypt-related things. This year I’m lucky to be present for the first time at an IYPT without any official role at all – yet probably I’ll be doing one of the most important jobs for all of you participating: Together with Georg and Wolfgang I’ll be responsible for results and fight-previews, distributing jurors to groups and all that other tournament more…