Congratulations to the NZ Representative team who came 13th of 38 national teams and received bronze medals.

 Details of the 2025 tournament will be announced in August 2024

The New Zealand Young Physicists’ Tournament is organised by the New Zealand Young Physicists’ Trust, Registered Charity CC62496. Through this competition, the Trust aims to:

• Encourage critical thinking, problem solving and genuine experimentation for Physics students
• Provide a fun physics competition between schools (“a bit like debating, but there’s a point to it”)
• Select and train a team to represent New Zealand at the International Young Physicists’ tournament. This will be in Malmö, Sweden in July 2025.

The tournament is open and inclusive to all New Zealand students studying NCEA level 3 Physics, or other advanced school Physics courses, in New Zealand. Students may enter as either an individuals or in a school team.

The National Team Tournament

In advance of the tournament, teams of three students prepare solutions to five of seven questions. Students will study these problems over several weeks, researching them through simple experiments and linking them to theory.

At the tournament students in teams of three will present their research and answer questions about it from other teams in a series of ‘Physics Matches”. These are watched and scored by a jury panel. The cumulative score from all matches decides the top teams in the country.

Dates for the 2025 national, inter-school team tournament will te announced in term 3 2024. The tournament will be held on a Saturday and start at 9.00. a.m. and conclude at about 4.00 p.m.   Where feasible there will be physical locations for the tournament or teams can compete by Zoom, from their locality.  The physical location(s) will be announced in January 2024 after we have selected the optimum locations from all the expressions of interest received.

NZ Selection Squad for Malmö 2025

The New Zealand team will be made up of 5 students who are attending school in New Zealand and are NZ citizens or have NZ residency. The team will be selected from a larger squad of about ten students who impress the judges in the national tournament or from an individual video entry.

There are two ways for an individual student to make the NZ squad:

i) impress the jurors at the National Tournament. Iif you are in the winning team you will definitely be offered a place in the squad

OR

ii) If you are not in a team or can’t compete in the national tournament for other reasons, send a video (of you presenting your solution) to the squad selectors by the due date. If your solution shows promise you may be selected. 

The NZ squad will each be given one more question to work on.  They will then be asked to present their solution live by Zoom and be questioned by the selection panel. 

The panel will select the five students to be the NZ team from the selection squad.

How to apply:

Teachers should register the interest of their team(s) and other interested individuals using the online form as soon as possible in term 4 2024.

Further instructions and updates about the tournament will be sent to those teachers at regular intervals up to the date of the national team tournament. This will include venues, payment due dates, etc..

Only one application per student is allowed. It is not possible to be part of a team and make an individual entry.

Fees for 2024: (These will be revised for 2025 but we will keep them as low as possible)

Fees for a team attending via Zoom are $60 per team. To cover the cost of room hire and catering, (morning tea, lunch and afternoon snacks), Fees for teams attending in person are $135 per team of three students and their teacher/juror.

Fees for individuals to make a video entry are $25 per student.

Fes may be waived in cases of hardship if approved by the NZYPT national organising committee.