IYPT

Switzerland wins a bronze medal at the IYPT 2025 in Lund, Sweden!

After a series of tense Physics Fights, team captain Harald Martinussen and his teammates Mathis Banerjee, Szymon Domalewski, Csongor Muszely and Rachel Silveira Camargo secured another medal for team Switzerland, scoring 43.3 points in the last round.

The team was accompanied by their leaders Jason Hu and Svenja Ruth as well as Sam Norton, Ophélie Rivière, Malte Uthoff, Frédéric de Montmollin, Emilie Hertig, Daniel Keller and Eric Schertenleib.

Congratulations to all!

For the first time, the Swiss team won the International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT). In Timisoara, Romania, the team of Jan Kamm (Captain), Anja Christina Duevel, David Fankhauser, Chengjie Hu, and Joel Tan won the title of Physics world champion. The students were coached by Ophélie Rivière, Jakob Storp, Daniel Keller, Eric Schertenleib, and Michael Klein.

The Swiss team won a silver medal at the International Young Physicists’ Tournament 2021 in Kutaissi, Georgia. Congratulations to Jan Kamm (Captain), Che Chen, Elen Flynn, Chengjie Hu, Joel Tan (all team members) and Alisa Miloglyadova (coach).

Following the cancellation in 2020 and an online national competition, we are delighted that students could compete at the international tournament and present their hard work. The IYPT was a highlight for the students in a very difficult school year 2020/2021.

Congratulations to all!

The IYPT-participant, Oskari Jyrkinen, has written a report about his impressions from the IYPT 2019. Furthermore, he explained why he participated at the SYPT.

Experience report IYPT 2019

This year’s IYPT was held in Warsaw, Poland and the students representing Switzerland were Daniel Gotsmann, Manuel Antoinette, Oskari Jyrkinen, Michael Klein and Alisa Miloglyadova. As all the students representing Switzerland, I got into the team by qualifying for the team at the qualification round where the best nine students of the national tournament participated.

There are different reasons why I decided to participate at the SYPT and eventually IYPT. First of all, I really enjoy trying to understand physical phenomena and the feeling you get when you successfully model such a phenomenon mathematically after having spent hours, days, if not weeks experimenting and pondering is just priceless. In addition, I saw it as a unique opportunity to develop my presenting and critical thinking skills, as they are an integral part of this tournament. By participating at the IYPT you also get very competent coaching which is undoubtedly very valuable.

The opening ceremony started off with lectures and speeches from IYPT officials and renowned physicists. As one might imagine, many students were very tired after the last preparations from the night before. Nevertheless, the students were woken up from their dozy state of mind when a group of dancers and singers entered the auditorium and started a traditional Polish singing and dance performance and encouraged the whole audience to dance along, cheering up the mood in the auditorium.

Finally, the time came for the forming of the physics fights. One by one the teams’ captains had to randomly pick a sculpture with a number beneath assigning each team for a fight. When it was time for our captain, Daniel Gotsmann, to pick a sculpture, the emotions in the auditorium were high as Singapore turned out to be our rival in the first fight. On our way out of the auditorium other teams wished us luck for the first fight against serial winner Singapore.

Nevertheless, we had a comparably strong first fight which provided us with a great deal of confidence. In the following days our performance and team work kept improving as we climbed up the ranking. The day before the fight against Brazil and Iran, the tension was high as we had to make sure not to be surpassed by our strong rivals and not to lose our third place in the total ranking. All three teams in this fourth fight had a strong performance which made it one of the most memorable and exciting fights.

After all the preliminary rounds the moment of truth was about to be revealed. Nervously we were waiting for the scores of the last preliminary round to be published. Great was our delight when we heard that we had won the gold medal of this year’s IYPT by qualifying for the final.

After an intense day of preparation, the day of the final came where we had to face China, Germany and Singapore. We performed well, coming third, only 1.8 points behind the winning team Singapore. Finally, all the hard work, missed excursions and lack of sleep had paid off.

After a great tournament, the whole Swiss team decided to stay in Warsaw for the weekend to enjoy and celebrate the gold medal as well as to catch up on the missed excursions.

I would like to thank both team leaders, Emilie Hertig and Markus Niese, as well as Eric Schertenleib and Daniel Keller for their competent support before and throughout the whole tournament. Their contribution and dedication undoubtedly played an immense role in achieving the results we did.

The Swiss team wins gold at the 32^nd International Young Physicists’ Tournament in Warsaw, Poland! The delegation consisting of Daniel Gotsmann (captain), Manuel Antoinette, Oskari Jyrkinen, Michael Klein and Alisa Miloglyadova as well as their coaches Emilie Hertig (team leader juror), Markus Niese (team leader), Daniel Keller (experienced juror) and Eric Schertenleib (experienced juror) secured the third gold medal since 2013. This success is the reward for the hard work in the months leading up to the tournament

The fight plan ensured a difficult start for the Swiss. In round 1 they met serial winner Singapore as well as the hosts Poland. This team managed to show a solid performance which resulted in the 5^th place after the first round. The results improved as the tournament went on. In the end, 209.3 points were in enough to secure their spot in the final and the gold medal that comes with it.

In the final Oskari Jyrkinen presented the problem Hurricane Balls, Daniel Gotmann did the opposition and Michael Klein the review. After a very intense fight the team missed out on the trophy by 1.9 points and ended third. Nevertheless, they can be very proud of their achievement.

We congratulate our students to an excellent performance at the IYPT 2019!

The 31^st International Young Physicists' Torunament took place from the 19^th to the 26^th of July at RDFZ Yizhuang Campus in Beijing, China. At the tournament the team comprising of David Tschan (Captain), Daniel Gotsmann, Daniil Lozner, Piotr Salustowicz and Jakob Storp came 10^th. The five students were accompanied by Emilie Hertig (Team Leader), Eric Schertenleib (Team Leader, IOC), Daniel Keller (Juror) and Samuel Byland (Juror, EC). Congratulations to a successful tournament!

Experience Report from David Tschan

After having decided to participate in the team qualifications for the IYPT, I was assigned a new problem to work on for the next three weeks: problem number three, Dancing Coin. Prior to giving my consent to keeping on the work, I had had a meeting with the principal of my school and Mr. Weiss, during which I was assured that I had the full support of GKG behind me, that I would be allowed to not visit certain classes and to work instead. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, I was given a key with which I was able to access the school and the physics facilities. From that point onwards, I probably spent more time in the lab than in classes. The setup that I used for Dancing coin required a few tries until it worked. However, once it did, it proofed invaluable for I was able to measure all the relevant physical entities relatively easily.