Proud of young team
THE purpose of secondary school education should be to maximise the opportunities for the child to learn not only through formal instruction in the class, but also through experiencing a wide range of different educational settings and meeting people from varied backgrounds.
This was certainly the case for three Parklands College learners, Seth Vögler (Grade 11), Frank Smuts (Grade 11) and Devon Crowther (Grade 12) when they were invited to participate in the German Young Physicists’ Tournament (GYPT 2017), from March 3 to 5.
The tournament is held annually at the German Phyziksentrum in Bad Honnef, where the finalists who have been selected from regional competitions held throughout Germany participate in a tournament used to select the German National IYPT Team, which will compete in the International Young Physicist’s Tournament in Singapore later this year.
Every year the IYPT set up approximately 17 of the toughest problems surrounding physical phenomena for young physicists around the world to carry out scientific research into.
The level of investigation is beyond that of a normal Science Fair project.
The Parklands College team accompanied by Mr Don Duffield, head of physical science who was also a judge at the GYPT, had to each present their investigations in the following format:
A 12-minute presentation of their research findings:
Defend a 12-minute scrutiny and discussion of their findings from the opposing team.
Four minutes of questioning from the panel of judges.
Four minutes of feedback after having been scored.
The standard of competition was extremely high, with the top investigations going well beyond normal undergraduate university students of physics.
Germany is undoubtedly the most dominant force in the Young Physics World. Since the inception of the International Tournament for Young Physicists, no country has even come close to the Germans in winning the competition as many times.
The Germans have won it eight times and have placed second almost the same amount of times. The Singaporeans are second with five wins. So Seth, Devon and Frank were truly in a “world class arena”. Their results are outstanding taking into consideration that they had neither competed at this level before, nor in this competition. They also had only half the preparation time of most participants.
Out of 84 taking part in the tournament, Seth placed 21st, meaning he was in the top 25% of the participants. Frank placed 24th in the top 30% and Devon placed 47th.
If one looks purely at the presentation of their scientific findings and the quality of their research: Frank placed 16th, Seth placed 19th and Devon placed 36th!
Out of 30 teams, Parklands College placed 12th! The GYPT organisers were astounded at the performance of the Parklands College students considering this was the first time any school in South Africa had participated.
As a community, we can be very proud of our young physicists. Ellie Clews Social Media Co-ordinator Parklands College