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From: Physfitfreak <physfitfreak@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: What Made My Day Today? :-)
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2024 22:17:28 -0500
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- the calculator used in this year's physics olympiad is Casio fx-82ES 
PLUS, 2nd Edition. Its specs and user manual pdf were provided to 
participants months back. They also were given a web emulator for it.

This is the schedule of events:

https://www.ipho2024.ir/CKeditorImages/42eca8bb-fc14-4684-a9d8-32272fcfe53e_1721707568.pdf

As you see, lots of fun is also in store for the students. Esfahan is 
rich in history as well as nature and industry. They'll enjoy seeing all 
that. I'll miss the food cuisines served baby... I'm missing it so bad.

The olympiad's youtube channel has this to say about Esfahan for this 
year's competition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6rMgiMJJLw

Today was the experimental exams.

But what are the tests on?.. This is the syllabus:

https://www.ipho2024.ir/page/5

Past competitions' questions are available for student to study and 
practice with. There are a lot of them! So there is no shortage of 
knowledge base, only possible shortage of personal drive and/or time.

I remember for the PhD level qualifying exams I gathered all the 
previous 5 years worth of questions, and went through each one of them 
and studied what I needed to answer them correctly. This proved 
fantastic in the outcome. And this is generally one of the best methods 
to prepare for any physics exam. You don't have all the time in the 
world, so you'd have to concentrate where questioners' concerns are.

Even in Landau's famous "theoretical minimum" tests for applicants of 
PhD level study at his institute, those who only covered everything 
required for answering all the past questions' correct answers made 
headway and entered the institute. It was extremely difficult and almost 
impossible to approach that test via some general study of the subjects.

So in this olympiad's syllabus also, it recommends students to study the 
past questions to know what is expected of them :)


Speaking of "theoretical minimum", some applicants even went beyond such 
preparations, and studied particular pet areas and ideas in physics that 
the examiners had had since their dissertation days, and prepared 
themselves for them even when some of those ideas had turned out to be 
incorrect. They got the passing score more by stating the solution of 
the problems that the professor in question emphasized on, rather than 
what was the correct solution! This was mentioned in memoirs of at least 
one of the students, and points to how important it is to _concentrate_ 
on specific areas, not on the general physics knowledge.

Of course this is just a good technique to pass physics exams, not to 
study physics itself :-)

So I have no doubt those students participating in this olympiad have 
already devoured every question that was posed since the first olympiad 
:) You wouldn't maintain some degree of self-confidence without that.