Berkeley Physicists' Tournament

The Berkeley Physicists' Tournament (BPT) is a research focussed competition for Berkeley students. It was inspired by the International Physicist’s Tournament (IPT) and embodies a similar spirit of fun explorations into every-day problems. The main purpose of the tournament is to encourage investigations of the various physical phenomena that occur in the world around us and nurture healthy competition. Register for BPT here.

The first information meeting has already taken place, but a recording is available here.

See last year's problems here.

How BPT works

• Participants enter in teams of 2 and are given 2 weeks to investigate a problem of their choosing out of 3 options. (see: How are teams organized? below)
• The participants are not required to declare their choice of problem and may switch between the problems as they please. They will still present one problem at the tournament.
• The participants can request funds for any experimental materials they may require (upto a certain limit). (see: How do you get funds? below)
• All the teams present their solutions using a powerpoint on a zoom call on the day of the tournament and receive questions from the other teams on their work.(see: How is the tournament conducted? below)
• The tournament is peer reviewed - i.e the score of any team is determined by the other teams.(see: How does scoring work? below)
• The 3 highest scoring teams receive prizes!(see: What are the prizes? below)

How are teams organized?

While you are declaring your interest on the google form for the event, you will be asked if you have another team member in mind or whether you would like to be assigned one.If you fall into the latter, then you are randomly paired up with one of the people in the pool who are also looking for a team member. Once the teams are announced, the problems will be sent out and there will be 1 week before the tournament for you to develop a solution to your chosen problem.

How do you get funds?

We want to encourage your creative spirits in experimental design without stressing your personal funds.And anyone who would like funds for a particular experiment in BPT can simply submit a proposal for the funds to the organizers! Email competitions “at” sps “dot” berkeley “dot” edu with the subject line “BPT Funds Request.”The organizers will get back to you with a figure for how much can be expended from the BPT budget to fund your experiment.

How is the tournament conducted?

• On the day of the tournament, the teams will be arbitrarily ordered in a sequence for presenting their problems. A presentation consists of two rounds:
  • Presentation Round: Each team will be allowed to present for a maximum of 8 minutes.
  • General Discussion Round: After each presentation, all of the other teams must pose a question to the presenting team. The other teams will phrase and write down their questions on a google doc shared with everyone. This round will be allotted 12 minutes of time.

How does scoring work?

Teams will score other teams during the tournament, we will give out scoring sheet on the day of the tournament, and you will give scores for each of the other teams:

Note: All scores are out of 10

With respect to the team's presentation:

1. Theoretical Basis
2. Experimental Setup and Data Collection
3. Data Analysis and Interpretation of Results

With respect to the team's performance in general discussion:

1. Quality of Scientific Discourse and Civility
2. Throughtfulness and Constructive Character of Questions

Once the organizers have this information from all participants, the final score for a team is a weighted average of the score in each of these categories.

The weighted score will be:6/8 * Presentation_Total_Score + 2/8 * General_Discussion_Total_score

What are the Prizes?

The top 3 scoring teams will receive, in order, $30, $20, $10 as prizes for their win!

Past BPTs

BPT Nov. 14, 2020

See the problems here.

BPT Sept. 26, 2020

From China to South America, these amazing Berkeley students had incredible solutions! See the problems here.

1st place: Nicolas Albiani & Sri Gudivada, 2nd place: Bingxu Meng, 3rd place: Jinze Wu