A team of students under the umbrella of the Christian Doppler grammar school is leading after the central round of the Young Physicists Tournament. However, none of the top competitors has won yet. There is still a selection camp left before the end of the competition, which will decide on the nomination of the five best representatives of the Czech Republic for the international round in Lund, Sweden.
A total of seven three-person teams entered the central round at the Institute of Physics from 25 to 27 March. No one wanted to make any unnecessary mistakes during the presentations, so the students were adjusting their solutions to the problems announced in July by the organizing committee of the international tournament until the very last moment.
For three days, the teams fought in the tournament without fouls, but already in the final presentations of the competing teams it was clear that the Talnet team would not defend last year's win. This year the game was closely dominated by the GChD+ team followed by the Higgs gang, while the offensive of the opponents was too fierce for Olomoucké srnky.
Gabriel Hamrle from the Jan Kepler grammar school, a representative of the winning team, summed up his impressions of the victory: "I am extremely happy because there was a lot of effort behind the experiments. My pleasure stems from the fact that I finally could present the results of the many months of effort in front of people and the jury and got feedback." And what was the biggest challenge for Gabriel? "You need to react in the moment in a tournament, the opposition is very quick and vigorous," he said.
New schools and competitors were able to join the tournament this year due to the changed rules. The main change for the students is the ability to compete in the district round without having to be part of a larger team and only through the competition will they find friends to work with on solving problems and then participate in the central round. "We have witnessed a number of very interesting presentations, and I can say that the quality has improved by leaps and bounds this year," said event organiser Hynek Němec.
The award ceremony was attended by Michael Prouza, Director of the Institute of Physics, together with Ondřej Gros, Mayor of Prague 8, and Andrea Králová, representative of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. Libor Inovecký explained to the contestants where the steps of the successful solvers of the tournament led and that it is not necessarily only physics.
The software engineer and Quantessence consultant won the international round of the tournament in 1998. For the students he prepared examples of the careers of his fellow competitors, including Petr Luner, now a senior software manager at Google, economist Filip Matějka, gastroenterologist Jakub Mikeš, the first SpaceX employee Lukáš Kroc or Martin Dienstbier, co-founder of Diana Biotechnologies. "You who are sitting here today as successful researchers may be standing here in thirty years and you will be talking about a field that will interest you all your life, and it doesn't have to be physics," Inovecký concluded his speech.
Michael Prouza, a former participant in the fight and now the director of the institute, took the time to watch one of the “Fyzbojs (physics battles). In his closing remarks, he praised the students who took on the challenging competition and expressed his admiration for them, as he believes the competition is significantly harder in a team of three.
"Although I had no problems with physics, it was not one of my favourite subjects," admitted Prague 8 Mayor Ondřej Gros and continued: "This country will also need smart minds in the future in order to always be strong enough and defensible. I am very happy to see so many talented people here."
Andrea Králová from the Department of General Education came to congratulate the winning teams on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. "We all know that STEM fields are expected to boom these days, and I am very happy that we have such great students in our country. I hope we will hear from you again when you win more awards or are at the birth of discoveries that will make our lives easier in the future."