I. International Young Physicists' Tournament

The International Young Physicists' Tournament (IYPT) is a competition among teams of secondary school students in their ability to solve complicated scientific problems, to present solutions to these problems in a convincing form and to defend them in scientific discussions, called Physics Fights (PF).

II. The problems of the IYPT

The problems are formulated by the International Organizing Committee (IOC) and sent to the participating countries not later than in October. These problems may be used in regional and national tournaments.

III. The participants of the IYPT

1. The national teams

    Any invited country, as well as the host country, is represented by one team. Only such country can take part in IYPT which already took part in the past or sent an observer in one of the last three years.

2. The membership of the teams

    The IYPT team is composed of five secondary school students. The secondary school graduates could     participate in the IYPT in the year of their graduation. The participation of university students is not allowed.     The LOC may allow participation of teams of four or three students. The composition of the team cannot be     changed during the Tournament. The team is headed by a captain who is the official representative of the     team during the PF.

3. The team is accompanied by two team leaders.

IV. The Jury

The Jury is nominated and organized by the LOC in cooperation with EC. The Jury consists of at least five members, if possible from different countries. Team leaders, at least one from each team, are included in the Jury. The team leaders cannot be members of the Jury in the PF where their teams participate and should not, if possible, grade the same team more than twice.

V. The agenda of the IYPT

The IYPT is carried out in a period determined by the LOC (from May to July).

All teams participate in five Selective PFs. Selective PFs are carried out according to a special schedule, following the rule that, if possible, no team meets another team more than once. This schedule should be known before numbers are ascribed to the teams by lot. The best teams participate in the Final PF.

The host country provides a cultural program for the participants.

VI. The Physics Fight regulations

Three or four teams participate in a PF, depending on the total number of teams. In the course of a PF the members of a team communicate only with each other.

Before the beginning of a PF, the Jury and the teams are introduced.

The PF is carried out in three (or four) Stages. In each Stage, a team plays one of the three (four) roles: Reporter, Opponent, Reviewer (Observer). In the subsequent Stages of the PF, the teams change their roles according to the schemes:

Three teams PFFour teams PF

Stage 1 2 3 Stage 1 2 3 4

TeamTeam
1Rep Rev Opp 1Rep Obs Rev Opp
2Opp Rep Rev 2Opp Rep Obs Rev
3Rev Opp Rep 3Rev Opp Rep Obs
4Obs Rev Opp Rep


VII. The Stage regulations

The performance order in the Stage of a PF:Reserved time in minutes

The Opponent challenges the Reporter for the problem...............................1
The Reporter accepts or rejects the challenge...........................................1
Preparation of the Reporter..................................................................... 5
Presentation of the report.......................................................................12
Questions of the Opponent to the Reporter
and answers of the Reporter................................................................... 2
Preparation of the Opponent................................................................... 3
The Opponent takes the floor, maximum 5 min. (E)
and discussion between the Reporter and the Opponent...........................15
Questions of the Reviewer to the Reporter
and the Opponent and answers to the questions...................................... 3
Preparation of the Reviewer.................................................................... 2
The Reviewer takes the floor................................................................... 3
Concluding remarks of the Reporter......................................................... 2
Questions of the Jury............................................................................. 5

In the Final PF the procedure of challenge is omitted.
The official language of the IYPT is English.


VIII. The team performance in the Stages

The Reporter presents the essence of the solution to the problem, attracting the attention of the audience to the main physical ideas and conclusions.
The Opponent puts questions to the Reporter and criticizes the report, pointing to possible inaccuracy and errors in the understanding of the problem and in the solution. The Opponent analyses the advantages and drawbacks of both the solution and the presentation of the Reporter. The discussion of the Opponent should not become a presentation of his/her own solution. In the discussion, the solution presented by the Reporter is discussed.

The Reviewer presents a short estimation of the presentations of Reporter and Opponent.

The Observer does not participate actively in the PF.

During one PF only one member of a team takes the floor as Reporter, Opponent or Reviewer; other members of the team are allowed to make brief remarks or to help with the presentation technically. No member of a team may take the floor more than twice during one Selective PF or, as Reporter, more than three times in total during all Selective PFs. During the Final PF any team member can take the floor only once.

The LOC must inform about the devices available for presentations not later than two months before the IYPT.

IX. The rules of problem-challenge and rejection

1. All problems presented in the same PF must be different.

2. Selective PF

The Opponent may challenge the Reporter on any problem with the exception for a problem that:

a) was rejected by the Reporter earlier;
b) was presented by the Reporter earlier;
c) was opposed by the Opponent earlier;
d) was presented by the Opponent earlier.

    If there are less than five problems left to challenge, the bans d), c), b), a) are successively removed, in that     order.

    During the Selective PFs the Reporter may reject the challenge of three different problems in total without     penalty. For every subsequent rejection the coefficient of the Reporter (see section X) is decreased by 0.2.     This reduction continues to apply during the following selective PFs.

3. Final PF

    Within four hours after the announcement of the results of the Selective PFs the teams participating in the     Final choose their problems. In case teams choose the same problem, priority is given according to the     order of presentation in the Final (see section XII). The choice should be made public immediately.

X. The grading

After each stage the Jury grades the teams, taking into account all presentations of the members of the team, questions and answers to the questions, and participation in the discussion. Each Jury member shows integer marks from 1 to 10. The mean of the highest and the lowest marks is counted as one mark which is then added to the remaining marks. This sum is used to calculate the mean mark for the team. The mean marks are multiplied by various coefficients: 3.0 or less (see section IX) for the Reporter, 2.0 for the Opponent, 1.0 for the Reviewer and then transformed into points.

XI. The resulting parameters

1. For a team in the PF
    The sum of points (SP) is the sum of mean marks, multiplied by the corresponding coefficients and rounded     to one decimal.

2. For a team in the Tournament
    The total sum of points (TSP) equals the sum of SP of the team in all Selective PFs. The average TSP of     the three teams having the highest TSP in the Selective PFs, denoted as RTSP, serves as reference (see     section XIII).

XII. The Final

The three teams having the highest TSP in the Selective PFs participate in the Final. In case teams have equal TSP, their participation in the Final is decided by the most balanced teamwork during the Selective PFs, in case of equality by lot.

The order of presentation in the Final is also determined by the TSP, in case of equality by the most balanced teamwork, in case of continued equality by lot: the higher the TSP, the lower the number in the scheme of section VI.

XIII. The final team ranking of the IYPT

The winner of the Final obtains the 1^st place. If two or three teams have the same SP result in the final, the winner is nominated according to the highest TSP. The other two teams participating in the Final share the 2^nd place. Teams not participating in the Final, which have TSP ł 90% RTSP, share the 3^rd place, assuming the number of such teams does not exceed 50% of the number of all teams participating in the IYPT. In opposite case the 3^rd place is shared by the half of all teams participating in the IYPT, having the highest TSP and not participating in the Final.

XIV. The status of the regulations of the IYPT

The regulations are established by the IOC and may be changed only by the IOC.


Accepted by e-mail, January 2008.