Great team's success - We congratulate the bachelor students Florian Hirsch, Hannes Kroke, Justus Heß and Christian Schäfer for an outstanding performance, which they achieved in a team with physics students from the University of Hamburg and the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Winners in the German competition round

At the beginning of 2022, Florian, Hannes and Justus joined forces with two students from the University of Hamburg to form the "HIGGS" team and completed a series of tasks on complex physics problems. In a head-to-head final that took place online and consisted of several "Physics Fights", HIGGS became the best team in Germany and Florian Hirsch the best presenter. With this victory, the team qualified for the "International Physicists' Tournament", which took place in Colombia in May 2022.

5th place at the International Physicists' Tournament (IPT) in Bucaramanga, Colombia

The six-member German team consisting of three students from Freie Universität Berlin - Florian Hirsch, Justus Heß and Christian Schäfer - as well as students from the University of Hamburg and Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg competed against 14 other national teams from around the world from May 9 to 14, 2022.

In the "Physics Fights," individual team members presented solutions to problems they had previously worked out theoretically and experimentally as a team, and discussed the proposed solution with their opponent. The students had 17 openly formulated problems to solve. For example, they had to investigate the bouncing of fully or partially filled table tennis balls or the breaking of chalk. The range of topics covered many different fundamental topics of physics.

In the semi-finals, the German team competed against the teams from Ukraine and France and achieved an excellent 5th place overall with 219.66 points. This is not only the best German placing so far, but also an open door for the German team to participate in next year's competition: the top seven countries are seeded for next year, all others have to go through a qualification round first.

Lots of inspiration, new friends and scientific partnerships

"Overall, the competition was a great experience for us - actually, no wonder with more than 150 extremely motivated physicists from all over the world in a competition format that rewards constructive discussions at a high technical level," Florian Hirsch reports. "Add to that the great local food, the exciting Colombian culture and many new friendships."

In addition, he says, German IPT participants and two other national tems want to initiate a joint publication of the developed solutions to the problems posed in the competition in a junior journal. An energetic step toward a productive scientific future.

Physics Finalists Finish Fifth