US skips “Physics World Cup,” holds its own contest

Declaring that the middle of May is “an impossible time for US high schools to participate,” US organizers declined to send a team to Croatia to compete at the International Young Physicists’ Tournament earlier this year. Instead, the US Association for Young Physicists Tournaments Inc, formed in 2003 in part to compete in the IYPT, hosted its own international competition over a weekend last February. The USAYPT will begin fundraising “in earnest” this fall to expand on its tournament and its efforts to promote research in high schools, says USAYPT secretary and treasurer Bruce Oldaker.

Even though IYPT statutes allow the host country to choose dates between May and July, the decision to hold the 21st IYPT—billed “The Physics World Cup” by its organizers—so early is a rare one, says IYPT president Gunnar Tibell. “All dates are awkward for some countries,” adds Tibell. “Of course, we are concerned that the Croatian choice was not suitable for the US team, [but] we are also concerned that later dates are impossible for other teams.”

Both the IYPT and the US invitational featured “physics fights,” where students debate a subset of questions from a list that is released about a year prior to the face-offs. Old IYPT questions were used for the US invitational, including investigating pendulum oscillation between charged capacitors. In the final debates, the only non-US participant, an Australian team from the Brisbane Girls Grammar School, edged out Virginia’s all-boys Wood-berry Forest School—host of next year’s invitational—to capture first place.

This year’s IYPT was its first since achieving legal status as an international organization. Germany took the top prize in Croatia, while the host country tied with New Zealand for second place. The 2009 IYPT will be held 10–16 July in Tianjin, China, and will be organized by the Nankai University school of physics.