Competition

Teams of three to four Bachelor and Master students take part in PLANCKS. Each country is only allowed to send a limited number of teams. These teams are selected through preliminary decisions. The competition will take place on Saturday (May 7th) from 9 am to 13:00 pm (UTC + 2).

You can check whether your country offers a preliminary in the list of registered preliminaries.

PLANCKS Problems

During the competition, problems in different fields of physics have to be solved.

To give you an impression of the difficulty and type of problems you can face during the PLANCKS competition, previous problem sets and solutions are available here:

Rules

The general rules of PLANCKS can be found here.

Particularities of the Hybrid Competition

PLANCKS 2022 will be held as hybrid event. Therefore, there will also be an online part of the competition next to the in-person one in Munich. Because we have to harmonise both parts of the event, the online participants will write the exam at the same time as the in-person participants do. In particular, this means that the exam will start at 9 am CEST (UTC+2) on 7 May for all participants.

Furthermore, in order to guarantee equal chances between all participants, there are some requirements that apply to online attendees:

  • Members of each team write the exam in the same room (possibly at some university)
  • During the exam, they are supervised by a professor or someone with an equivalent role to ensure that all rules are being followed
  • The supervisor will be in a Zoom meeting with members from our jury for questions on the exam or the announcement of any updates on the exam (supervisors will also be briefed beforehand)
  • The same rules as for in-person participants apply, for instance: no electronical devices (i.e. computer, smartphone, etc.), no other help (e.g. books, other students,...), the exam duration is 4-hours, and everything else that is either included in the PLANCKS rules or additional rules that we officially apply (this e-mail should just update you on what we plan, these information are not final). Note: Consequently, the exam may not be written on a tablet and only on paper!
  • After the exam, the students' solution will be scanned and send to our OC by the local supervisor. We will confirm that we have received your solutions

Please note that these requirements are necessary to ensure a fair competition. This must be managed by the local teams individually and confirmed by the Organising Committee of PLANCKS22. However, the organizers of the preliminary are encouraged to support their representatives to ensure that the organisation runs smoothly. Please take into consideration that the above implies that the name of the supervisor must be send to the OC in time to ensure that the person exists and is a valid supervisor.