Author: Dimitris Gkavakos

Don’t forget, that the registration for the XXVI. International Conference of Physics Students in Budapest, Hungary opens February 15th. To register please visit the webpage of the conference at icps2011.mafihe.hu.

The Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy (ASTRON) and the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE) announce the availability of a limited number of grants for their 2011 Summer Research Programme. The Programme enables astronomy students (graduate or advanced under-graduate) to spend the summer (10-12 weeks) at the Dwingeloo Observatory, conducting astronomical research under the supervision of ASTRON and JIVE staff members. Possible topics of study include radio galaxies and quasars, aspects of observational cosmology, continuum and line emission/absorption from normal and starbust galaxies, faint radio sources, pulsars, molecular clouds, cosmic magnetism, as well as working with LOFAR data. The actual project the successful candidate will work on will be defined after arrangement with the local supervisor.

Deadline on February 1st, 2011.

More information here.

During the summer months of 2011 HGS-HIRe and GSI organise a Summer Student Program which is offered to a limited number of students in physics or related natural science disciplines from Europe or GSI/FAIR partner countries.

GSI, the German research center for heavy-ion physics, is one of the world’s leading accelerator laboratories for basic research with accelerated ions. In cooperation with an international research community the existing accelerator complex will be significantly extended by a new Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR). The center provides unique research opportunities for investigations in the fields of hadronic and nuclear physics, nuclear astrophysics, atomic, laser, and plasma physics, materials science, and biophysics with applications to cancer therapy, new accelerator developments and radiation safety. Detailed information about the program here.

Application deadline is February 15, 2011.

CERN financial support is offered to students in physics and engineering fields who are nationals of countries that are not Member States of CERN. Students will join in the day-to-day work of research teams participating in experiments at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Attendance requires a presence of a eight weeks on site during July and August in order to follow the series of lectures and complete a research work experience. More information here.

IAPS has a new leaflet to advertise it, which will be distributed to the attendants of the IAESTE meeting in Bangkok. You can find it here and use it for your own purposes.

The IAPS Executive Committee wishes you a happy new year.
To celebrate the new decade, you can now become a fan of IAPS on facebook. Most students check facebook more often than this page, so we hope that more people will notice updates this way. If you prefer to get your news via RSS, you can subscribe to our feed.
For those who are already in the professional live, we have a group on linkedin, where alumni of IAPS can meet.
Last but not least, there is still the open mailing list IAPS Agora as an open space to discuss whatever you want with other physics students.

jIAPS, the journal of the International Association of Physics Students, is holding a writing contest. The idea is simple: write an article on a physics-related topic. This can be, for example, about your research, a physical phenomenon that you find fascinating, a historical piece about a physicist you admire, or a review of an activity held by your local association. The contest is open to all IAPS members (apart from the editors and the executive committee of IAPS of course!), and articles should be at a level understandable by first or second year university physics students.

We have extended the deadline to December 5th. Articles should be sent to jiaps@iaps.info and should be no longer than 1000 words in length. Submissions will be judged by the jIAPS editors and the IAPS executive committee, and the winner will receive a place at the 2011 International Conference of Physics Students (ICPS) in Budapest, Hungary, with registration fee paid for. The winning article and a selection of runners up will be published in a future edition of jIAPS.

To get an idea of the kind of articles that are published in jIAPS, check out some previous issues at www.issuu.com/jiaps or www.iaps.info/jiaps. We welcome everything (within reason!) from traditional subjects like semiconductor devices or astrophysics to fun and unusual topics like self-heating chocolate.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
The jIAPS Editors

The Hungarian Association of Physics Students is happy to announce,
the 41st and for the 12th time international
Rudolf Ortvay International Problemsolving Competition in Physics.
http://ortvay.mafihe.hu
Date: 21st October – 2rd November, 2010

The competition is online, so you are likely to join from any country on the world, if you are a university or PhD student in any field.
The goal is to solve up to ten from the 30-40 problems given. These can be downloaded from the web page above in several formats from 12 am (CET), the 21st of October, and send Your solutions back via email or fax till the deadline, that is 2rd November 2010. You have to solve the problems by yourself (no group works are accepted) but you are welcome to use any tools you wish (including computers).
The assigned problems do not focus on school-level problem-solving routine but rather on the skills of physical way of thinking,
recognition of the heart of the problem, and the appropriate choice in the mathematical armory.
The competitors are selected into categories by their years of study.
(PhD students also form an separate category), so dear Undergraduates,
don’t be afraid to join!

A new tournament for physics students is organized in the USA. Here is the basic information we got from the organizers:

The University Physics Competition (www.uphysicsc.com) is a new international contest for undergraduate students, who will work in teams of three at their home colleges and universities, and spend the weekend of 6/7 November, 2010 (48 hours) analyzing an applied scenario using the principles of physics, and writing a formal paper describing their work. At the start of the contest, each team will select one of two problems to work on during the weekend. The problems will be accessible to students who have had one year of university physics and will be designed to be conceptually rich and open-ended in nature, so that there may not be one unambiguously correct method, but instead there may be many useful approaches and approximations. During the contest, teams may use books, journals, computers, the Internet, programs that they write, or any other nonliving resources, but they may not consult with any people outside of their team. After the contest, papers will be ranked, and awards will be made. This contest is sponsored by the American Physical Society and the American Astronomical Society. Registration is now open at www.uphysicsc.com Start organizing a team today!