IAPS

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!

The annual general meeting of IAPS (AGM) was held during the ICPS in Graz. The minutes are not published yet, but here are the most important results:
ICPS 2012 will be held in Utrecht, Netherlands in cooperation with university Twente.
Also a new Executive Committee (EC) was elected:
President – Camelia Florica
Vice-president – Sarah Haji
Secretary – Konrad Schwenke
Treasurer – Juha Korpi
General Members – Milan Vrućinić, Dragos Carabet, Alexander van der Torren, Bence Ferdinandy & Antonija Mijatovic

The study associations A–Eskwadraat from Utrecht and S.V. Arago from Twente are bidding together to host ICPS 2012.
They present their bid on http://icps.a-eskwadraat.nl.

The international Nanoscience student Conference – INASCON will take place from 20th August through 22nd August 2010 at Baarlo, Netherlands. The conference has been successfully held in Denmark and Switzerland for three consecutive years. The goal of the conference is to attract Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD level students from around Europe in order to facilitate scientific collaboration and interpersonal interaction. The students in attendance  will be offered a snapshot of the current state of the art in nanotechnology. Students will present their own work (poster/talk) as well as listen to lectures from leading scientists.  It is great way to exchange experiences and to get a view on what is happening in Europe.

The conference is being supported by the MESA + Institute of Nanotechnology in Enschede.
For registration and other information, please visit: http://www.inascon.eu. For any further information, you can send a mail at: inascon2010@inascon.eu.                    .
The registration deadline is 1st August, 2010.  You can also present your poster or can give a talk for 15 minutes (including question-answer session). Last date of abstract submission for the poster/talk is 6th August, 2010.

The new issue of jIAPS in over a year can be downloaded here (10MB).
With contributions from all over the world the issue includes
highlights from ICPS 09, an account of how to perform experiments in
low gravity from Joshua Fuchs (USA), the physics of the aurora from
Ania Sokulska (Poland) and the physics of paper planes from Ali
Farnudi (Iran) as well as musings from the editors on topics as diverse
as self heating chocolate and optical illusions. The (not so) new EC
introduce themselves, their hobbies and their favourite formulae. We
hope you enjoy this issue.

If you would like to see more jIAPS then we are always looking for
contributions, email to jiaps@iaps.info.

Once again, enjoy,

The jIAPS editors