Dear leaders of national physics teams,
As you all know, the on-site European Physics Olympiad in Satu Mare, Romania, has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we are happy to announce that there will be an online edition of EuPhO-2020, from 20th to 26th July. The registration is open until 12th July 2020. Please fill in the registration form. If you cannot access google forms, please send an e-mail to eurphol@gmail.com. For the online edition of EuPhO-2020, the statutes of EuPhO will still apply, cf. EuPhO_Statutes.pdf, except for §4 and §6.
A brief summary of the important points:
- Each country can be represented by one team of five contestants;
- Guest teams from outside Europe will be admitted;
- If the number of guest teams starts becoming too big for the Academic Committee to handle, we may need to limit the number of guest teams (priority is given to those who have participated earlier, and to those who have registered earlier).
Regulations additional to the Statutes, applicable only to this online edition of EuPhO:
- The contestants of each national team together with a supervisor are asked to gather into a single room. The competition room should:
- have a good air ventilation;
- be big enough to ensure that the distance between the contestants is at least two meters;
- have a reliable Internet connection;
- have a scanner or camera for scanning the examination papers.
- A printer for printing out the problem texts should be either in the competition room, or in its immediate neighbourhood.
- From each competition room, a video stream is sent to the organizers (Academic Committee and volunteers) over a Zoom connection. The video frame should cover all the contestants and their desks, those leaders who are inside the room, and the entrances of the room.
- Immediately after the test has been finished, the written test papers need to be scanned or photographed and transformed to pdf inside the competition room while the video stream is still active.
- If in some countries, strict mobility and distancing limitations make it impossible to gather the whole team into a single room, organizers will negotiate with the team leaders to work out the best possible solution.
- The participation fee covering the expenses of the Academic Committee, graders and organizers, as well as special awards of the winners is 50€ per participant from European countries, and 70€ per participant of guest teams.
- The Academic Committee is trying to work out a low-cost experiment the components of which need to be bought by the team leaders. So, team leaders should be ready to fund the purchase of the required equipment. At this point of time, we cannot say the exact cost, but we can guarantee that it will not exceed 100€ per contestant (our target, though, is 50€ per contestant). Of course, you’ll be able to use the purchased equipment for training purposes in the future. Many details are still being worked out, for instance, how the translations will be made.
The first competition round will take place on 20th July; The second round will take place on 21st July. Both rounds will start tentatively at 9:00 GMT.
After the completion of the second round, contestants can leave the meeting point of their team, and return to their homes.
Academic Committee and graders will grade the papers during the next three days, preliminary results will be announced as early as possible, but not later than 24th July, 23:59 GMT.
Moderation will take place over Skype or Zoom on 25th July, and the closing ceremony will take place over Zoom on 26th July. Medals and diplomas will be sent by mail to the team leaders during the next few days.
Any questions can be sent to eurphol@gmail.com.
Jaan Kalda