Physics Náboj is an international physics competition designed for teams of five high-school students that represent their schools. The problems in Náboj differ considerably from the routine school exercises which usually require only direct application of a given method: the Náboj problems require certain amount of inventiveness and ingenuity. Success in the competition is not depend on the individual abilities of the team members only but also on their efficient cooperation. This year the competition was held on the 4th of November 2016 at the exact same time at different locations, different countries.
The Hungarian part of the Náboj Physics was hosted by the Budapest Young Minds Section in Budapest, and we were able to organize the competition for 70 high school students without a registration fee. Teams were competing in two categories, Juniors and Seniors. The Junior category was open only for teams with all members attending first or second grade of a 4-year high school (or a corresponding grade in 5- or 8-year high school). The Senior category was open to any team consisting of high school students. The competition lasted 120 minutes during which the teams were trying to solve as many given problems as possible.
At the beginning of the competition each team received eight problems. As soon as the team correctly solved any of the problems, it received a new one. The solutions of the problems were mostly numerical. The winner was the team that solved most problems correctly in the given time limit. The difficulty of the problems was appropriate both for students inexperienced in physics competitions and for students who have already succeeded in Physics Olympiad or seminars. This was achieved by arranging the problems in order of their perceived difficulty. This year as the years before the professional quality of the problems were guaranteed by the organizers of Physics Correspondence Seminar part of Trojsten. After the competition and before the announcement of the results Dálya Gergely, a member of the Gravitational research group in the Eötvös University, held an informative lecture about gravitational waves for the students and the accompanying teachers. In the end, the best teams received certificates and prizes, like T-shirts, first-class physics literature (used worldwide for preparation for studying physics), and complimentary ticket to the CSOPA Science Center.
More about the competition: https://physics.naboj.org
Pictures: https://goo.gl/photos/us4Q5E2LnbNjQKKs6