The New Zealand Young Physicists’ Tournament is a researched based Physics team competition open to all New Zealand students studying NCEA level 3 Physics, or another advanced Physics examination courses, in New Zealand.
The Tournament is organised by the New Zealand Young Physicists’ Trust, registered charity CC62496. Through the tournament, the Trust aims to:
- Encourage real world skills in critical thinking, problem solving, team work 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 Lund, Sweden in July 2025.
And the 2025 New Zealand Champions are….
New Plymouth Huia!
A combined team from New Plymouth’s Boys’ and Girls’ High Schools won the national title. Congratulations to Oliver Marsh, Charlie Herbert and Rayna Kim guided by teacher Dr Kerry Parker.
This year eighteen teams, from twenty schools competed over three rounds of physics matches at Auckland Grammar school. Our thanks to all our wonderful judges. The medalists are
Gold – New Plymouth Huia
Silver – St Cuthbert’s College 1, Auckland
Bronze – Queen Margaret College, Wellington and Kristin School, Auckland
We had a couple of firsts:
- For the first time the young women won more medals than the young men.
- For the first time we had teams with members from different schools – including our winners!
- For the first time we had a tie for a medal place with Queen Margret College and Kristin School, sharing the bronze medal.
Now we move onto selecting the rep team. Twelve students have won places in the “possibles” squad and are rapidly researching a new problem. On Sunday 13th April they will all present their solutions to the Trust. From this our team of five new Zealand Reps will be chosen for the International Tournament in Sweden this June. Watch this space!
ACCELERATE!
Alumni Amy Cui was in the last pre-Covid team that competed in IYPT Warsaw in 2019. Read how her engineering work still uses the pressure drop concepts she presented in Poland.
Congratulations to our 2024 NZ Reps!
Congratulations to the NZ Representative team who came 13th of 38 national teams, winning bronze medals in Budapest, Hungary this July.
- Matthew McKee (captain) – Auckland Grammar School
- Alison Power – Onslow College
- Belle Yin – St Cuthbert’s College
- Charlie Li – ACG Parnell
- Emilio Grey – New Plymouth Boys High School
We wish them all great success with their tertiary studies.
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