Regulations 2024

Regulations of the New Zealand Young Physicists’ Tournament

NB: Please read carefully. The competition in 2024 has a new format

And Qualification for New Zealand representation in the International Young Physicists’ Tournament

I. International Young Physicists’ Tournament and the NZYPT

The International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) is a competition among teams of secondary school students from around the world. Typically in year 13, students testing their ability to solve complicated scientific problems, present solutions to these problems in a convincing form and defend them in scientific discussions, called Physics Fights.

The New Zealand Young Physicists’ Tournament (NZYPT) is the official qualification tournament for New Zealand students to participate in the International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) and is open to all secondary school students. NZYPT are calling our competition rounds “Physics Matches”, PM as they are not that aggressive! But this is only a name change – the rules remain the same.

II. The problems of the IYPT

The 17 problems are formulated by the International Organizing Committee (IOC) of IYPT and sent to the participating countries not later than in October. The New Zealand National Organising Committee (NOC) selects 7 of these problems to be used in the qualification competition NZYPT. The 7 problems for NZYPT are published on the New Zealand Young Physicists’ website   www.iypt.org.nz

III. The participants of the NZYPT

1. Entries

A PM is a team event and students are encouraged to enter as teams where possible.

Any school in New Zealand can enter up to two teams into NZYPT prior to the published deadline. In cases where a school does not have enough suitable students; students may enter individually or, schools may, at the discretion of the NOC, combine to form a team.

Schools are encouraged to travel to the national finals and compete in person. However a Zoom option is available.

An individual competition is available for students who cannot participate in a team for any reason. This involves making a video about their research in the format of a PM report. This format is explained below.

Teachers are asked to fill out an expression of interest for their students. This is the first step towards an entry and should be made as soon as possible in term 4 2023. Only teachers who have expressed an interest for their students will receive the follow up emails with further instructions and information about the tournament including completing their entry, venue details, fees, deadlines, video instructions and tournament news. It is assumed that teachers will share this information with their participating students.

2. Entry Fee

The entry fee is $135 per team in 2024. This incudes room hire, meals and snacks throughout the day for the three student team and their Team Leader. Travel costs are additional to this and should be met by the school and/or students. Teams competing online via Zoom etc are charged $60.

The entry fee for individual students entering by videoing their in 2024 is $25

At the discretion of the NOC, tournament fees may be reduced or waived in cases of significant hardship. Please contact the Organising committee if you wish to discuss this.

3. Late entries

A deadline for fees and receiving your student’s completed entries are published every year. These are usually about a month before the tournament is held in order to give the organising committee time to print the programme etc. Schools should pay their fee by the deadline to obtain entry to the tournament.

4. The membership of the teams

An NZYPT team is composed of three secondary school 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 PM.

Between them, the team should aim to investigate at least five problems to give them sufficient problems to present when challenged.

A student cannot be a member of a team and submit an individual entry.

5. Team Leaders

The team is accompanied by a teacher who is the team leader. All teams must supply at least one teacher to act as a judge (at the regional tournament in which the team is competing). The competition cannot take place without sufficient judges. Any team who cannot bring at least one judge must notify the regional organizers to see if it is possible for the team to compete. The judge does not have to be a physics teacher but must be someone with a Physics based degree OR a previous student participant of IYPT.

6. Regional and National Finals

If number require it, regional finals will be held before a national final. In 2024 we anticipate only the national final will be held.

IV. The Jury

The Jury (at each level of the tournament) is nominated and organized by the NOC. It consists of university academics, school physics teachers, parents and supporters of NZYPT with relevant degrees . The team leader from each team is automatically included as a Jury member unless the school has supplied an alternative. Where possible team leaders should not be judging their own team and should not grade the same team more than twice.

VI. The Physics Match regulations

In the course of a PM the members of a team may communicate freely with each other as long as they do not disturb the match or the judges.

Before the beginning of a PM, the Jury and the teams are introduced to each other.

Two teams participate in a PM. Each PM is held in it’s own room (Teams / Meet or on Zoom) with only the participating team and their jury present. If an uneven number of teams are entered one room will have three teams who compete in a round robin.

VIII. The team roles in a Physics Match

Each team will have either a reporter or an opponent in each PM

The Reporter presents the essence of the solution to the problem, attracting the attention of the audience to the main physical ideas and conclusions. Standard devices for presentation are whiteboard and computer data show projector. For further devices the teams should consult the organizers. Live demonstrations of the phenomena encountered in a problem are encouraged.

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 proposed solution. The Opponent analyses the advantages and drawbacks of both the solution (major part) and the presentation (minor part) 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 opposition report may start with a presentation using a data projector and continue in the discussion phase with the use of diagrams and calculations on the whiteboard. 

During one PM only one member of each team takes the floor as Reporter or Opponent. Other members of the team are allowed to make brief remarks or to help with the presentation technically.

VII. The Stage regulations

These PM timings are taken from the international competition rules.

A Physics match has a strictly timed steps outlined here in minutes. This is a maximum time and the jury will stop any step that exceeds it’s allotted time by more than a few seconds.

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

The Opponent asks the reporters a few clarifying questions . . . . .           2

Preparation of the Opponent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . .           3

The Opponent presents their observations (up to 4 mins) before a discussion between the Reporter and the Opponent . . . . . . . . .          14 minutes in total

The Jury asks additional questions of both teams.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    5

Grading and collection of scores from the jury.

NB: each PM has two fights with the teams swapping roles. If a three team is needed, the teams will have three fights so each is Reporter and Opponent once.

IX. The rules of problem-challenge and rejection

1. The problems presented by each team in a PM must be different.

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 no problems left to challenge, the bans d), c), b), a) are successively removed, in that order.

During the Selective PMs the Reporter may reject the challenge of two 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 PMs.

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 highest and lowest marks from the jury are averaged to form one mark. The team mark will be the mean of the combined high/low mark and the other judges marks.

The mean mark is then multiplied by 3 for the reporter and 2 for the Opponent, to give the team’s points for that PM. This ensures that research and presentation is given predominance in the scoring.

The winning team will have the greatest number of points after three rounds of PM. The members of that team are automatically offered places in the New Zealand training squad.

XII. Individual entries

Individual students may enter by submitting a 12 minute video presentation of one problem. Submissions must be made before the due date and time or they will not be considered. The deadline is likely to be 48 to 24 hours before the team competition.

Every video received by the deadline will be viewed by the NOC who will select a few of the strongest entries for follow up and potential selection for the New Zealand squad.

IYPT New Zealand squad selection 2021

The National Selection Committee (NSC) selected the NZ squad of top students from the NZYPT competition and from the national entry of videos submitted online. Each squad member was allocated a new  IYPT problem to solve and present to the NSC. The NSC then chose five students to represent New Zealand in the IYPT in 2024. Individual entry for this process is $25.

XIII. The status of the regulations of the NZYPT

These regulations are established by the NOC and may be changed only by the NOC.

Revised for 2024 – 5th November 2023

If these rules are updated or clarified before the 2024 tournament, all teachers who have submitted an expression of interest will be informed.