Illustrative stock photo (source: Unsplash)
A team of secondary school students from Slovakia won gold medals in several rounds of the International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) held in Kutaisi, Georgia.
In the overall ranking, the country placed second, after Poland.
The Slovak team was comprised of Veronika Ucekajová, Karolína Jediná, Daniela Vasiľová, Nina Nevláčilová and Michal Varšányi. The team's captain, Ucekajová, also won an award for the most successful tournament competitor.
What is IYPT?
Sometimes referred to as the “Physics World Cup”, IYPT is a scientific competition between teams of secondary school students. It mimics real-world scientific research and the process of presenting and defending the obtained results.
Participants (five-member teams) have almost a year to work on 17 open-ended inquiry problems. A good part of the problems involves easy-to-reproduce phenomena presenting unexpected behaviour, according to the IYPT website.
The aim is not to calculate or reach “the correct answer” as there is no such notion here. It is rather conclusions-oriented as participants have to design and perform experiments and draw conclusions from the experiment's outcome.
In Slovakia, the competition is organised by IUVENTA - Slovak Youth Institute, the TASR newswire reported.
