INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY BREMEN

IUB students score at physics competition

   

Every year several hundred students from top-ranked universities in North America take part in the Boston Area Undergraduate Physics Competition (BAUPC). This year a team from IUB successfully joined them as the first European university to participate and scored two places amongst the top ten.

[ Jul 11, 2003]  It began with the initiative of IUB student Florin Ionita from Romania and IUB physics professor Peter Schupp, who learned of the Boston Area Undergraduate Physics Competition (BAUPC) while studying and carrying out research at Princeton University in the USA.

"Many of our students have successfully taken part in all sorts of science olympiads and competitions during their school time. When I saw the potential of our physics students, I knew that the BAUPC could be the right challenge for many of them," explains Peter Schupp.

The Boston Area Undergraduate Physics Competition is a physics and to some extent mathematics competition that was designed to extend the idea and spirit of high school olympiads to students currently enrolled in undergraduate studies. Initially a Harvard University physics competition, over the years the BAUPC has become became a renowned competition in the USA. Today other top-ranked universities and institutions such as Princeton University, University of California at Berkeley, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, and Cornell University also regularly participate in this competition. In 2003 IUB joined this list as the first European university.

Nineteen-year-old IUB student Aurora Simionescu from Romania came in seventh despite the fierce competition. She began her studies at IUB in autumn 2002 and is a geosciences and astrophysics major. She and her fellow students Florin Ionita and Matthias Görner managed to score the maximum amount of 10 points on several of the questions.

"Overall an extraordinary result for our young team," says Professor Peter Schupp. The IUB team was supported by Tobias Fritz, first-year physics student at the University of Heidelberg, who came in third. The other students among the top ten came from Harvard, Caltech, MIT, and Stanford.

The BAUPC is usually held in April. Students take the exam at the participating institutions. The exam lasts four hours and six difficult problems have to be solved. To learn more about the exam see the BAUPC website.



BAUPC 2003
Want to give it a try? Take a look at the problem set! (PDF file)

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Here are the solutions! (PDF file)

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The scores and results can be found here.

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Author: Brita Schemmann. Last updated on 23.06.2005. © 2005 International University Bremen, Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen. All rights reserved. No unauthorized reproduction. http://www.iu-bremen.de. For all general inquiries, please call IUB at +49 421 200-4100 or mail to iub@iu-bremen.de.