Last weekend brought a remarkable double triumph for students who prepared at the University of Basel’s Physics Week: teams coached by our assistants won first place at both the German and the Swiss Young Physicists’ Tournaments.

At the 13th German Young Physicists’ Tournament (GYPT), Johann Hoffmann, Till Kuhny, and Jonathan Osswald from the Hans-Thoma-Gymnasium and phænovum Student Research Center in Lörrach took the gold medal with their team “hæven” — the fifth consecutive year a Lörrach team has dominated the competition. At the Swiss Young Physicists’ Tournament (SYPT), held the same weekend at ETH Zürich, Mathis Banerjee, Szymon Domalewski, and Arnav Aditya from the Gymnasium Kirschgarten Basel claimed first place with their team “Principle of Most Action”.

Both teams built and carried out their experiments during our Physics Week in the Praktikum of the Department of Physics, supported throughout by our PhD students and postdocs. The Physics Week is open to high school students from Germany and Switzerland and is designed specifically to prepare participants for the GYPT and SYPT.

The GYPT prizes were presented by Dr. Heike Riel, incoming President of the German Physical Society (DPG) and vice-director of the NCCR Spin. Riel described the GYPT as a unique competition where students not only work on challenging research tasks, but also present their findings and engage in scientific discourse.

Attention now turns to July, when both national teams will compete at the International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) — which this year takes place in Zürich. We congratulate all six students on their outstanding achievements and look forward to welcoming the next cohort of young physicists to our Physics Week this autumn.