Re: What Made My Day Today? :-)

- 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.