International Physics Olympiad (IPhO)

The International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) is an annual physics competition for highschool students. It is one of the International Science Olympiads. The first IPhO was held in Warsaw, Poland, in 1967. The competition is for teams of five students, none of whom have yet entered university. Individual competitors sit for intensive theoretical and laboratory examinations. For their efforts the students can be awarded gold, silver, or bronze medals or honourable mentions.

A list of recommended physics literature for self-study is slowly evolving.

 

General Information

 

Secretariat, Regulations, etc.

 

The official FTP site for International Secretariat of the IPhO is maintained by the President of the IPhO:

Waldemar Gorzkowski
Institute of Physics (at the Polish Academy of Sciences)
al. Lotnikow 32/46
PL 02-668 WARSZAWA
Poland
Fax: +48 22 8430 926
E-mail: gorzk@gamma1.ifpan.edu.pl

The IPhO Secretary is Prof. Maija Ahtee from Finland ahtee@edu.jyu.fi.

The International Secretariat carries such information as:

Accepted in Padova in 1999.

An appendix to the Statutes adopted in 1991.

Contact information sorted by country.

Participation statistics from the very beginning of the IPhO

Information about other national and international physics competitions
[ Submission form ]

 

Still under construction, but already contains the statutes, the syllabus, and an extensive description of the history of the IPhO. Maintained by Prof. Maija Ahtee.

 

This website is powered by Yevgeny Kats, who was a member of the Israeli team to the 29th IPhO (Iceland, 1998).

 

 

Future IPhOs

 

The 32nd IPhO will be hosted by Turkey in Antalya on June 28-July 6, 2001.

 

The 33rd IPhO will be hosted by Indonesia (?) in Jakarta on ?, 2002.

 

 

Past IPhOs

 

The 31st IPhO was hosted by the United Kingdom at the University of Leicester on July 16-25, 2000. Contact:

Dr. Cyril Isenberg, FInst, FIMA
Physics Laboratory
University of Kent
Canterbury
Kent CT2 7NR
Phone: +44-1227-823768
Fax: +44-1227-827558
E-mail: C.Isenberg@ukc.ac.uk
 

 

The 30th IPhO was hosted by Italy in Padova on July 18-27, 1999. Contact:

Prof. Giuliana Cavaggioni
I.T.I.S. "A. Pacinotti"
via Caneve 93
30173 Venezia-Mestre
Italy
Fax: +39-41-5841272
E-mail: olifis@no.sctrade.it

 

The 29th IPhO was hosted by Iceland in Reykjavik on July 2-10, 1998.

Office of the Olympiad:

Taeknigardur, University of Iceland
Dunhagi 5
REYKJAVIK
IS-107 Iceland
Tel.: +354 525-5812
Fax: +354 552-8801
E-mail: ipho@rhi.hi.is

 

The 28th IPhO was hosted by Canada in Sudbury, Ontario, on July 13-21, 1997. Director of the 28th IPhO was Dr. John Wylie (flipper@helios.physics.utoronto.ca). Additional info.

 

27th IPhO (1996)

The 27th IPhO was hosted by Norway in Oslo from June 30 to July 7, 1996. Chairman of the Organizing Committee is Prof. Arnt Inge Vistnes (A.I.Vistnes@fys.uio.no).

 

26th IPhO (1995)

The WWW home page of the 26th IPhO to be held in Canberra, Australia (July 1995). Includes an HTML version of the Statutes (July 1994).

 

International and Regional Physics Competitions

 

National Physics Competitions

Belgium (in Flemish, under construction)

In preparation

 

Information on the Brazilian Physics Olympiad (Portuguese; English and Spanish in preparation). There is also the São Paulo Physics Olympiad.

 

Information on the Canadian Physics Olympiad, maintained by Dik Harris (dik@physics.mcgill.ca) at the Physics Department of McGill University.

UBC Physics Olympics Website supervised by the UBC Physics Department.

 

The WWW Home Page for the Colombian Olympiads (in Spanish), covering Mathematics, Phyisics, and Informatics, maintained by Fernando Vega Salamanca (fvega@zulima.uanarino.edu.co).
E-mail: olimpia@federman.uanarino.edu.co

 

Official site for Tim Olimpiade Fisika Indonesia.

See also information in English about the Indonesian Physics Olympiad Team, maintained by Jeffrey Rufinus (Jeffrey.Rufinus@cern.ch).

 

Information (in Dutch) on the Dutch Physics Olympiad.

 

Information (in Polish) on the Polish Physics Olympiad.

 

Physics competitions in Slovenia are supervised by DMFA.

 

Information about the Swedish Physics Comptetition, including problems and solutions, maintained by Lars Gislén (larsg@thep.lu.se).

 

Ukraine and here also

Information on the Ukrainian Physics Olympiads, maintained by webmaster@admin.ups.kiev.ua. Contact person: Prof. I. P. Pinkevich (pink@office.ups.kiev.ua)

 

USA

A report on how the US team did at IPhO'95 in Canberra, Australia.

 

Other Physics Competitions

 

 

International Mathematical Olympiad

International Mathematical Olympiad

 

The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is the World Championship Mathematics Competition for High School students and is held annually in a different country. The first IMO was held in 1959 in Romania, with 7 countries participating. It has gradually expanded to over 80 countries from all 5 continents.

The IMO Advisory Board ensures that the competition takes place each year and that each host country observes the regulations and traditions of the IMO.

 

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COMPETITION RESULTS

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EXAM PROBLEMS
 

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RELATED MATERIALS
 

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
 

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COUNTRIES WITH OLYMPIAD SITES
 

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YEAR BY YEAR IMO COMPETITIONS

 

 

   
 

 

 

 

History of the Asian Physics Olympiad

 

The first idea to form APhO actually came from Waldemar Gorzkowski the President of the International Physics Olympiad several years ago. He tried many times to contact and offers some Asian countries to host the 1st Asian Physics Olympiad. Unfortunately nobody responded. Finally in 1998 he offered us to be the host of the Olympiad. Considering being host of the international Physics Olympiad (IPhO) 2002, we accepted this offer.

The 1st Asian Physics Olympiad has several purpose: to know well the preparation of Asian students for the IPhO; to build a network among the leaders for further collaborative projects in physics education such as creating physics competition in their own countries and to encourage Asian countries participating in many international physics competitions.

The promotion of the 1st Asian physics Olympiad started in the old building at the Physics Department of Padua University, Italy. At that time Indonesian delegation encouraged all Asian country that participating in the 30th IPhO, to take part in the 1st APhO. The reaction was very good. After the meeting, Chinese Taipei (host of the 2nd Olympiad), Singapore (host of the 3rd Olympiad), Australia (guest team), Phillipines declared to participate.

The efforts continued through all the Asian embassy and by email. Finally 10 countries agreed to send their full delegation: Indonesia, Chinese Taipei, China, Singapore, Phillipines, Australia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Thailand and Vietnam. Malaysia, Brunei-Darussalam, and India sent their observers.

The first Asian Physics Olympiad got a very strong attention from the Indonesian government and other institution. The Indonesian president Mr. K.H. Abdurrahman wahid, the Indonesian minister of Education, Mr. Yahya Muhaimin Nobel Laureatte Prof. Yuan Tseh Lee, Mr. Stephen Hill (UNESCO Director for Indonesia), Mr. Mochtar Riady (chairman of Lippo group), etc attended the opening ceremony. And the Indonesian vice president Mrs. Megawati Soekarnoputri came to the closing ceremony.

One of the important point at scientific competition is proper choice of the competition problems. The Organizing Committee spent much time (several months) on analyzing different collections of the problems, different books (at the school level and at the university level), different problems given at the IPHOs, many problems given at the national physics Olympiads in different countries, etc. The most useful for us were the problems of the Polish Physics Olympiads. For that some ideas of the problems given at the 1st AphO are related to the ideas contained in the problems given in the past in Poland.