What is IYPT?

The International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT), sometimes referred to as the “Physics World Cup”, is a scientific competition between teams of secondary school students. It mimics, as close as possible, the real-world scientific research and the process of presenting and defending the results obtained.

Participants 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.

The aim of the solutions is not to calculate or reach “the correct answer” as there is no such notion here. The Tournament is rather conclusions-oriented as participants have to design and perform experiments, and to draw conclusions argued from the experiments’ outcome.

The competition itself is not a pen-and-paper competition but an enactment of a scientific discussion (or a defence of a thesis) where participants take the roles of Reporter, Opponent and Reviewer and are evaluated by an international Jury.

The beauty of the Tournament is that teams can take quite different routes to tackle the same problem. As long as they stay within the broadly defined statement of the problem, all routes are legitimate and teams will be judged according to the depths reached by their investigations.

In 2013, IYPT was awarded the medal of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) in recognition of its inspiring and wide-ranging contribution to physics education that has touched many lives and countries, over the past 25 years.

Singapore's Performance at IYPT

Singapore first participated in the International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) in 2009 when it was hosted in Tianjin, China. The Singapore team has been performing very well at this annual competition, emerging as champions at the following editions: 23rd (Vienna, 2010),  26th (Taipei, 2013), 27th (Shrewbury, United Kingdom, 2014), 28th (Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, 2015), 29th (Ekaterinburg, Russia, 2016), 30th (Singapore, 2017) , 31st (Beijing, China 2018), 32nd (Warsaw, Poland 2019) and 37th (Budapest, Hungary 2024).

In 2020 and 2021, the Singapore team did not participate in the IYPT due to COVID-19 restrictions. However, the Singapore team participated in equivalent online tournaments, namely the New Zealand Young Physicists' Tournament in 2020 and the Online Young Physicists' Tournament in 2021. They emerged as champions in both years.

2022 was a unique year where Singapore saw an opportunity to provide more students the chance to participate in the competition. Two teams were formed, one for the 35th (Timisoara, Romania 2022) IYPT and one for the Online Young Physicists' Tournament 2022. In both competitions, our teams emerged as the first runner up.

Congratulations, Team Singapore!

2024 IYPT Champion

Singapore is back at the 37th IYPT, held in Budapest, Hungary. The Singapore team emerged as the Champion! Congratulations Team Singapore!

The Singapore team comprised Chee Xin Yi Hilary (team captain), Ong Jiunn Xiang, Tan Teng Fong Christopher and Wang Yunze from Raffles Institution, and Xu Kangyou from Hwa Chong Institution.  The team was led by A/Prof Paul Lee Choon Keat from National Institute of Education, Ms Chan Kwee Yong from Raffles Institution, Mr Lim Wei Hao from MOE and coached by Mr Matthew Yar Kwok Jway.