History of Young Physicists' Tournament in Russia

The very first Young Physicists’ Tournaments (in Russian: Турнир юных физиков, Romanization: Turnir yunykh fizikov, Turnir junych fizikow, Turnir junyh fizikov) were held in Soviet Union in 1979, 9 years prior to the first IYPT. The organizer, main activist and supporter of this new type of competition was Evgeny Yunosov, professor of physics at Moscow State University.

The 1980 article by Evgeny Yunosov

In August 1980 Evgeny Yunosov has published an article titled "Young Physicists' Tournament" (Russian: Турнир юных физиков) in Kvant magazine (a popular Soviet science magazine for secondary school students, now available online). Yunosov has proposed the structure of a Physics Fight with teams having roles of Reporters, Opponents and Reviewers and was the first to underline that the suggested problems had no certain known answer and would make a problem even for a specialist. The 1980 article has determined the main features of YPT that remain milestones of the competition until today:

:* "A Physics Fight is a collective competition of young physicists in their ability to solve complicated problems, to present their solutions in a convincing way, and to hold a discussion", wrote Yunosov in 1980.

:* "Perhaps, the best scheme of a Physics Fight is if teams present themselves as Reporters, Opponents and Reviewers, in turn. At first, a representative of Reporter team presents their solution of a problem. Then, an Opponent poses questions to the reporter and announces his critical remarks. Naturally, that leads to a discussion. Finally a Reviewer evaluates the performances of both Reporter and Opponent", considered Yunosov.

:* "In usual problem books, there are still no tasks of this type, and they would constitute a problem even for a specialist. However the life poses such problems to physicists daily. The jurors were very interested in seeing how students approached these problems, what qualitative explanation they proposed, what physical model they chose, what approximations they did, what experimental investigations they carried out, and in what way", underlined Yunosov.

:* "The students were provided with the list of 17 problems", noted Yunosov in 1980, launching the tradition of 17 problems selected annually (however, this number was fixed only for the problems of the Correspondence Round, while other problem lists were somewhat flexible).

Features of early YPTs

The structure of a Physics Fight was rather flexible in early 1980s and it took some years to reach quite a stable scheme. Some discrepancies between current IYPTs and early 1980s YPTs in Soviet Union are listed below.

:* The YPT was organized in several major rounds: the Correspondence Round, the Semi-Finals and the Finals. Sinse 1981, when the Quarter-Finals were held, Semi-Finals and Quarter-Finals were mentioned as Selective Fights. During the Correspondence Round, the students were supposed to provide written reports on selected problems that were later graded by jury. The teams that have sent researches of sufficient number and of sufficient quality were invited to Semi-Finals (As in 1980, 8 teams reached Semi-Finals. In 1981, 6 teams fought in Semi-Finals. Throughout 1980s, the number of teams at the Correspondence Round was at the order of 40).

:* In 1980s, the Semi-Finals were quite similar to today's common YPTs because the teams discussed the problems of the Correspondence Round (that they had known in advance). However, these problems were typically released just in few weeks before the event.

:*Not all the problems were known before the competition; some problems were delivered to the participants just at the Finals (as for 1980, the Finals included “big” problems (to be solved in 1 hour) and “little” problems (to be solved in 10 min). Since 1982, mostly 1-hour-problems were proposed). The method of solving challenging tasks at a competition (still with a possibility to use any advice, literature reference, experimental evidence etc.), now abandoned, may have provided a chance to check if the participants could apply their skills to certain problems, without long preparatory phase.

Examples of 1980 “big" problems: “Estimate the contact time between a floor and a given elastic ball as it falls down from a height of 1 m”; “Study and explain the behavior of a filament of a light bulb when it is approached by charged bodies”.

”Examples of 1980 “little" problems: “A magnet doesn’t influence on a wooden match. However, if a match is burned, it is attracted by a strong magnet. Explain this phenomenon"; "If you align a sheet of metal foil on a rigid surface and you move your nail in a certain direction, the metal foil will tend to bend upwards. Why?”

An example of 1986: it was proposed to determine the mass of the paper replica of Montgolfier balloon that was provided at the finals of YPT in 1986, but the participants could not approach the replica.

:* Number of students in a team was flexible. In 1981, no more than 15 participants within a single team were allowed.

:* As for 1981, an Opponent was not allowed to ask more than 8 questions to the reporter.

:* Observers, or so called bolelschiki (fans), were also solving certain problems. In 1980s, every observer that had gained some points could grant his points to any of the participating teams. In 1982 the observers had 50 min to solve their problems, but only 5 min in 1985.

:* All in all, at least 25-40 problems were to be solved at a certain YPT (at a Correspondence Round, at Semi-Finals, at Finals, at Captain’s contests, at Observers' contests etc.) Not all the problems were published, and as for 2007, it is quite common when former YPT participants reveal unpublished problems from their archives.

Timeline and organization of early YPTs

The YPT problems in 1980s

As at today’s IYPTs, the problems never included completely defined conditions and were intentionally left open ended. Most problems would sound quite naturally for a today's IYPT and were covering mechanics, electricity, magnetism, optics, aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, thermodynamics and other branches of physics.

However, certain problems of early YPTs considered not only pure physics, but many interdisciplinary subjects, such as astronomy, computer data processing, image recognition, physical chemistry and even computational biology.

In 1981, one of problems said: “Is it possible to write a copy of the A. Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo” novel with a single ball pen that costs 35 kopecks?" According to one of the researches, such a Soviet pen was able to draw a line of 1 km long. However, “The Count of Monte Cristo” included 1750000 letters, 64000 commas, 26000 dashes, 44000 full-stops and 5000 interrogative and exclamatory signs that required drawing 23 km in average handwriting.

A 1990 problem “Fractal?” asked to study the dependence of a wool balls’s mass on its diameter, when grandmother collects the thread into a ball.

Some engineering skills were sometimes required. A 1987 problem proposed to develop an Eternal Radio that would convert radio waves into sound without any power supply or batteries. The coefficient to evaluate the quality of the Radio, was proposed be given by x = P/Lm, where P was the acoustic pressure in 1 m from the device, L was the maximum of linear dimensions and m was the mass of the device.

The 1982 problem ‘Bus’ required to explain why vibrations in the back end of a bus were felt more clearly than near the driver’s seat. One of the teams has developed a vibrometer with connected tape recorder as a data storage device and measured the oscillations in different points of a usual public-transportation Soviet bus, then calculating average energy of oscillations, spectrum and spatial distribution of average amplitudes in different places in a bus.

Many problems of 1980s also required outdoor activities and applying physical principles to investigate phenomena that were hardly reproducible in a school lab or in a kitchen, like astrophysical phenomena.

Such problems required observation and measurement of all necessary parameters and dependencies without building an own setup to reproduce a phenomenon. Thus, these problems targeted to teach students to gain information from distant objects, such as space bodies, atmosphere or already existing anthropogenic or natural objects (buildings, urban infrastructure, mountains etc.)

Certain problems also required some background knowledge in languages or social sciences and asked to understand and explain sophisticated formulae or quotes of classical physicists.

Some problems also required a considerable sense of humor. For example, a 1983 problem asked to develop a method to transmit a written document to distances of 2 km using only 18th century means, and as fast as possible. The problem quoted "Rodney Stone” by Arthur Conan Doyle that described a method to transmit urgent and confidential information when attaching letters to cricket balls and hitting them. The “Rodney Stone” method allowed sending a letter in 50 miles in 30 min.

Besides everything, there were problems almost identical to today’s IYPT problems. Problem No. 19 “Splash” of the Correspondence Round in 1983 was similar to problem No. 7 "Splash” at IYPT’2008. The problem No. 11 “String Telephone” of the Correspondence Round in 1987 was similar to the problem No. 11 “String Telephone” at IYPT' 2004. Problem No. 3 “Camera obscura” of the Correspondence Round in 1988 was similar to the problem No. 3 “Pinhole Camera” at IYPT’2008.

The major authors of these problems were Evgeny Yunosov, Tatyana Korneeva, Igor Yamisnsky, Sergei Varlamov, Vladimir Braginsky, Pavel Elyutin, Alexander Korotkov, A. Kusenko.

The YPT Logo

Two horses and armed knights with mc² and hν shields seem to have appeared in 1981 or 1982. They were firstly used as the YPT logo in a publication in Kvant magazine in February 1982. However, the drawing was slightly different, with minor discrepancies to the current logo, commonly accepted in 1990s.

While in 1980s the writing on the second shield was E=ħω (with the reduced Planck's constant and angular frequency), it was replaced with just hν in 1990s. The formula E=mc² has similarly lost the left-hand side of the equation.

The first known appearance of the current logo was on the diplomas presented to the winners of the 6th IYPT in 1993. The author of these logos was not reported, and as in 2007, remains unknown to most IYPT community.

Support from scientific community in 1980s

As early as in 1980, Yunosov has stressed that the YPT is impossible without wide support from the physics community in universities. The 2nd Young Physicists' Tournament (1980) has already enjoyed a cooperation with Lebedev Physical Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, with university students at Moscow State University and at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, with the Znanie society (a Soviet science-promoting organization).

The YPT was immediately supported by the Kvant magazine.

In 1981, Yunosov invited Evgeny Velikhov to become the president of YPT Organizing Committee. Velikhov was among top Soviet scientists, the vice-president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the head of the Atomic Physics and Electronic Phenomena department. He remained the president of the YPT OC until late 1980s.

V. Bonch-Bruyevich, Lomonosov Prize winner, served as the Jury Chair since 1981. Georgiy Zatsepin has much helped YPTs in late 1980s and was elected the President of IYPT Organizing Committee in 1989.

Early International Young Physicists’ Tournaments

Main article: International Young Physicists' Tournament

1st IYPT

The 1st IYPT was held in 1988 and included, simultaneously, the rounds of the 1st Soviet Young Physicists' Tournament. The participants of the international rounds included the teams of Czechoslovakia, Poland and two teams of Soviet Union. A 2004 article in Gazeta "Moskovsky Universitet" lists Hungary among participants of the competition, which is not confirmed by other sources. It is known that in 1988, the combined Czechoslovak team included the winners of the Czechoslovak Physics Olympiad.

Russian language was the working language of the competition.

The teams of Poland and Soviet Union were winners at the 1st IYPT.

2nd IYPT

The preparation to the 2nd IYPT began immediately and was long and profound. By August 1988, it was supposed that the new international teams (unfamiliar with the format of the competition) would be supported by ‘curators’ (кураторы), school students of a host country that would help new participants to get familiar with YPT. The idea to allow a host country to have two representing teams was reported to be approved after international consultations in 1988. A preparatory international conference was tentatively scheduled to take place in October 1988.

The 2nd IYPT was combined with the Finals of 2nd Soviet YPT and was held on March 24 – April 2, 1989 in the Olympiyets Youth Center in Moscow, Soviet Union.

All in all, 32 Soviet teams took part at the Soviet YPT that helped to select and nominate two Soviet teams for IYPT (of Odessa and of School 710, Moscow). The international participants attended these rounds and, reportedly, both Organizing Committee and Soviet students did their best in sharing the YPT experience with international guests.

In 1989, 8 teams took part at 2nd IYPT, namely the teams of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, West Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, and two teams of Soviet Union. "Most teams spoke Russian, and the rest of the participating teams were accompanied by interpreters", reported a participant of the competition.

The common practice of using visual aids during the report was presenting paper posters. Several teams have collaboratively contributed to a hanwritten newspaper that covered current events, such as Physics Fights. The newspaper included many jokes, such as around the problem No. 10 "Mosquito": "At what maximum altitude can a mosquito fly?" The joke was, "How much energy would an experimenter need to explain to a mosquito that it has to fly at a maximum altitude, as long as possible, in March?"

Teams of West Germany and of Bulgaria were winners at the competition. The Organizing Committee of the IYPT was organized the same year, and Georgiy Zatsepin was elected as the president.

3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th IYPTs

By August 1989, the 3rd IYPT was scheduled to take place in Kladno (Czechoslovakia) on February 26 – March 3, 1990. However, it took place in Moscow again, ending with the victory of the Soviet team and involving 6 teams from 5 countries. The exact list of teams is not clear. The confirmed participants are Hungary (ranking 4th) and Czechoslovakia (ranking 5th or 6th)

The 4th IYPT was held in Moscow on July 22 – July 28, 1991. The participants at the competition included the teams of Great Britain, the Netherlands, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and two teams of Soviet Union. It is not clear if there were 7 teams from 6 countries or 8 teams from 7 countries. The team of Hungary was the gold winner. The Czechoslovak team was confirmed not to rank above 4th. The competition was attended by observers from France and Italy and by representatives of the European Physical Society. The tasks for the 5th IYPT were expected to be available by December 1991.

The Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991. Belarus, Georgia, Moldavia, Russia, the Ukraine and Uzbekistan could then send to IYPT their National teams.

The 5th IYPT (with 12 teams from 10 countries) took place in Protvino, Russia, on April 25 - April 30, 1992. The team of Belarus and the team of Czechoslovakia have shared the first position, winning gold. The list of participating teams and the ranking tables are obscure, but it is known that the Georgian team took the 4th place.

Czechoslovakia peacefully split into Czech Republic and Slovakia on January 1, 1993. These two countries could send independent National teams to the IYPT.

The 6th IYPT was held in Protvino (Russia) on June 18 - June 25, 1993. The competition has attracted as many as 19 teams from 11 countries: Belarus, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Moldavia, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, the Ukraine and Uzbekistan. The Georgian team was the gold winner. The ranking table is not clear, while it is known that Slovakia was not ranked above 4th, and Belarus was ranked 10th. Ukraine was ranked 2nd and Hungary was ranked 3rd (or, respectively, vice versa).

Russian remained the working language at the competition in 1993. However, the official seal already included the English abbreviation YPT.

YPTs in Russia in 1990s and early 2000s

Timeline

After Perestroika the governmental support for the YPTs in Russia was discontinued. The open Moskovsky Turnir Yunykh Fizikov (Moscow Young Physicists' Tournament) has replaced the union-wide Soviet Young Physicists' Tournament, that ceased to exist with the collapse of the Soviet Union, as reported Fryazino school, an active participant in 1988 - 1994. By 1994, Yunosov left his position of the responsible for the competition in Russia. However, he kept his position of the IYPT vice-president until late 1990s.

Despite these changes, at the 7th IYPT (Groningen, Netherlands), the first to be held outside post-Soviet area, the team of Russia has shared victory with the Czech Republic. Sergei Varlamov, who trained the team and led it to the achievement, published many tips and advices for preparation. The Organizing Committee head Valentin Lobyshev has emphasized in a 1994 Kvant article that "the experience of recent Tournament has shown an urgent problem; our team had an unsatisfactory knowledge of English language that was necessary for active communication and holding discussions. We should certainly take that into account when preparing teams."

The second considerable achievement of a Russian team took place in 2000, when the team has reached Finals and was ranked 3rd at the 13th IYPT in Budapest, Hungary.

Throughout 1990s the Russian teams could discuss their solutions with competitors at the selective Vserossiysky Turnir Yunykh Fizikov, but not everyone had an opportunity of direct communication with practicing researchers and academia. It was common that a team representing the country at a IYPT was not familiar with the format of the competition and with the experience gained by earlier Russian participants:

"We had to reject challenges to the problems in which we had both experimental and theoretical results, including ‘Cell and Accumulator’ and 'Candle Generator’. The reason was that we were not able to report them. At that moment the team has understood that a ‘ready’ problem is not a problem with some mathematical formulae or with a performed experiment. It is a problem that we also can explain", noted Olga Inisheva, a Russian team leader at 10th IYPT (1997).

The selective Russian competition could not hold previously excellent standards that led to a general feeling of discontent. Comparing to almost 40 participating teams in 1980s and a policy of promoting YPT nationally, holding preparatory conferences and seminars, issuing leaflets, advice books etc. and involving as many teams as possible, only few teams took part in Russian YPTs in 1990s. Since 1996 the practice of promoting the Russian and the International YPTs and covering Russian participation at IYPT in Web and in press was not apparently visible.

The role of the Russian language at IYPT was progressively decreasing, while the teams and team leaders apparently had limited skills in Scientific English and holding a scientific communication. Further competitions have shown that Russian teams experienced major problems with explaining themselves in English. The interpretation for them has been a common practice even in 2000s.

Sasha Nemsadze, the Georgian team leader at the 16th IYPT (2003), has published a report desrcibing and analyzing every Physics Fight he attended. The Russian, Finnish and Georgian teams met at the 5nd Selective Fight:

"In the first stage, the Finns proposed to the Russian team the problem “Freezing soft drinks”. [...] The game resulted to be almost comic. The Russian team, according to everyone's opinion, was rather weak, and furthermore they factually spoke no English.

They have read the presentation text from the slides on screen. All of their team corrected the misread words. Finns have understood nothing. The Armenian Jury chairman Gagik Grigoryan just approached the Russians and worked as their interpreter.

[At the next stage], the Opponent was a pretty girl from Russia. Gagik Grigoryan interpreted and, instead of her, reponded to the questions and made commentaries".

Performances of Russian teams at IYPTs in 1992-2003

This list does not include Soviet teams in 1988-1991. Russia-1, Russia-2 and Russia-3 indicate the teams that had gained 1st, 2nd or 3rd positions (respectfully) at the selective Moskovsky Turnir Yunykh Fizikov (later Vserossiysky Turnir Yunykh Fizikov) and were technically expected to represent Russia at IYPT. Except for cases when the winner have cancelled their participation, these names also refer to the titles in the ranking tables of IYPT.

Despite only 2 Russian teams at IYPT were allowed, the Russia-3 was invited to IYPT in 1997, achieving a better result than other Russian teams.

Analysis and critical opinions

"On June 2, we had a selective fight with teams from Poland and from Prague. In these countries, participants have a support in preparation, they hold training seminars. The technical facilities of these teams are incredible. Overall, we were completely unprepared to the level of English language of our competitors. […] Obviously, we and the second Russian team have failed all Selective Fights and became observers", wrote a team leader in 1998, explaining their results at 11th IYPT.

In 1995, after the 8th IYPT (Spała, Poland), the Moscow organizing committee head Valentin Lobyshev has explained the modest results, "above the only Finnish team", by the "composition of our teams, no succession with previous experience and the language problems, resulting in unsatisfactory English language."

"Recently, the problems emerged when organizing Tournaments in Russia. They were largely connected with its expulsion from the list of all-Russian Olympiads and conferences. As a result, the students that had won in the Tournament and had spent a large amount of efforts to prepare to it, must take the decision: either go to IYPT either pass exams to a university", wrote in 2002 Olga Inisheva, the team leader at 15th IYPT.

"How we can compete with the countries where the trainings are held professionally?" concluded in 2004 Evgeny Mogilewski, a team leader at the IYPTs in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and a representative of the Moscow Organizing Committee.

"[...] Unfortunately, recently in Russia, the participants receive help only from undergraduate students, if they don't have classes themselves. [...] Development tempo of the competition in Russia is going down, while all of work is done by enthusiasts only. We can only hope that the motherland of the Tournament will not be left on the margins of history", he noted.

Recent Russian performances at IYPT

Activities of POISK Centre

Main article: POISK Centre

Founded in 2004 at Saint Petersburg State University, the POISK Centre has focused on the fact that the leaders at IYPTs were teams of Slovakia, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Austria that were trained at scientific and educational university associations or centres and enjoyed active university support in the preparation of their National teams.

“We felt a strong need in using completely new ways of training and supervising Russian teams at IYPT. By 2004, there was an urgent need in a university-based educative and research centre that would help to select and prepare a competitive team. We have to admit that the performances of certain Russian teams at recent IYPTs were incompatible with the scientific potential of our country and the role that Russia used to play in developing YPT as a new institution and a new type of competition. The POISK Centre […] hopes to implement many plans in providing professional, transparent, well-organized system of training Russian teams”, stated POISK Centre in 2004.

Since 2004, the POISK Centre is remaining the university-based organization in Russia that is selecting, supervising and training the major National teams that represent the country at the International Young Physicists' Tournament.

The teams selected by POISK Centre have been participants of IYPTs in 2004 (Brisbane, Australia), 2005 (Winterthur, Switzerland) and 2006 (Bratislava, Slovakia) with significant success, winning bronze medals twice.

POISK Centre’s advice kits and presentations were very helpful in the preparation of the team that was expected to represent Russia at the 20th IYPT (2007). Their reports, published on July 10, 2007, were primarily based on the respectful help kits, solutions, research projects, tutorials and design templates, released by POISK Centre earlier.

Problem No. 14 "Earthquakes”, that occurred to be among the most interesting, was earlier warmly recepted at the selective Vserossiysky Turnir Yunykh Fizikov in March 2007 and at the Austrian Young Physicists’ Tournament in May 2007.

In recent years, the cooperation with Akademicheskaya Gimnaziya (Saint Petersburg, Russia) allowed to establish active relations with YPT teams and organizations, such as Physical and Mathematical Lyceum 239 (Saint Petersburg), Inta, Glazov, Stavropol, Salekhard, Novodvinsk, Kostroma, Chelyabinsk, Pushkin, Leningradskaya Oblast, Arkhangelsk, Nalchik.

After holding a joint Physics School with the Stanisław Staszic team (Poland), a gold winner at IYPTs in 2002 and 2004, the Russian team selected by POISK Centre fought in the Finals, made a best report and won silver at the Austrian Young Physicists' Tournament held in Leoben, Austria in May 2007. This team consisted of 4 students, from Tver, Arkhangelsk and Saint Petersburg.

As in 2007 the POISK Centre's teams included students from Arkhangelsk, Orel, Tver, Puchezh, Kazan, Saint Petersburg, while the candidates were selected from nationwide.

See also

• International Young Physicists' Tournament
• POISK Centre
• Austrian Young Physicists' Tournament

External links

• The very first article on Young Physicists' Tournament in the Kvant magazine (1980)
• Problems of early YPTs (1981-1996)
• Andrzej Nadolny. International Young Physicists’ Tournament (pdf)
• Memories of a participant of the selective Soviet rounds at the 2nd IYPT (1989)
• POISK Centre's activities and press-releases since 2004. Performances of the recent Russian teams at IYPT
• Proceedings of the 18th IYPT (2005) in Winterthur, Switzerland. (pdf)
• Official site of Kvant magazine