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jIAPS writing contest: deadline extended

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

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Rudolf Ortvay International Problemsolving Competition in Physics 2010

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!

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The University Physics Competition

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!

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Results of the IAPS AGM 2010

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

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2/2010 issue of jIAPS is online

IAPS celebrates its 23rd birthday this year, and in the edition of jIAPS  that can be downloaded from here, Jim Grozier tells us about his experiences in managing, and trying to organise, the archives of our association. In this issue we continue the tradition of publishing articles from IAPS members on various topics in physics, as well as reporting IAPS news. The topics covered this time are semiconductor lasers and terrestrial gamma ray flashes, along with an article on the Large Hadron Collider by one of the participants of the CERN trip that took place in March this year. As always we are looking for new articles and ideas, so don’t hesitate to contact us at jiaps@iaps.info.
jIAPS Editors
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Bid for ICPS 2012 from the Netherlands

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.

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Nanogeneration, bringing a dream into reality

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.

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jIAPS 1/2010 is online

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

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Balaton Summer School in Physics 2010

The Hungarian Association of Physics Students organises the International Balaton Summer School in Physics.
The school aims to introduce the most recent results in four areas of physics:

Astroparticle physics: The section includes an introduction to general relativity, and then will move on to star models, gravitational waves and observations in cosmology.

Energetics: The section will revolve around answering the energy problems of the 21st century. The thematics will be fuels, plasma physics and fusion, and generation IV reactors.

Medical physics: This section will present applications of nuclear physics, in medical sciences. You will hear about PET, CT, MRI, irradiation linear accelerators, gamma knife, 3D nonlinear microscopy and more.

Self-organisation and networks: This section will introduce game theory, networks and graphs and their use in social and collective phenomena, and also the collective motion of self-propelled particles.

Registration and detailed program on http://bss.mafihe.hu.

More information:

The school is located at Balatöngyörök, Hungary (at the shore of the picturesque Lake Balaton).
The date of the Summer School: July 11-18.
There will be 5 days with lectures. The final lectures every afternoon will be common plenary lectures,
where all of the sections will provide an overview of their most interesting results to everyone.
There will be 1 free day, when we organise trips to the beautiful surroundings (Keszthely, Badacsony, Kis-Balaton, and a castle and cave tour.).

Participation Fee: 100 Euros for IAPS members, 180 Euros for non IAPS members.
The price contains the accommodation for 7 nights, breakfast, lunch and dinner for the whole week,
the use of the sport facilities, the entrance fee to the beach and the price of one excursion.
Here are some information how you can become an IAPS member https://www.iaps.info/how-to-join/ .

Questions are welcomed at bss@mafihe.hu .

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Call for bids – ICPS 2012

Dear members of IAPS,
We are waiting for your bids to host the 27th International Conference of Physics Students (ICPS 2012).
Please send your application to the EC e-mail address (ec@iaps.info).
All bids should take into account the charter (article 19) and regulations (article 9) of IAPS.
See also here.