2nd_IPhO_1968 第二届国际物理奥林匹克竞赛2nd_IPhO_1968 第二届国际物理奥林匹克竞赛.doc

Problems of the 2nd International Physics Olympiads (Budapest, Hungary, 1968) Péter Vankó Institute of Physics, Budapest University of Technical Engineering, Budapest, Hungary Abstract After a short introduction the problems of the 2nd and the 9th International Physics Olympiad, organized in Budapest, Hungary, 1968 and 1976, and their solutions are presented. Introduction Following the initiative of Dr. Waldemar Gorzkowski [1] I present the problems and solutions of the 2nd and the 9th International Physics Olympiad, organized by Hungary. I have used Prof. Rezs? Kunfalvi’s problem collection [2], its Hungarian version [3] and in the case of the 9th Olympiad the original Hungarian problem sheet given to the students (my own copy). Besides the digitalization of the text, the equations and the figures it has been made only small corrections where it was needed (type mistakes, small grammatical changes). I omitted old units, where both old and SI units were given, and converted them into SI units, where it was necessary. If we compare the problem sheets of the early Olympiads with the last ones, we can realize at once the difference in length. It is not so easy to judge the difficulty of the problems, but the solutions are surely much shorter. The problems of the 2nd Olympiad followed the more than hundred years tradition of physics competitions in Hungary. The tasks of the most important Hungarian theoretical physics competition (E?tv?s Competition), for example, are always very short. Sometimes the solution is only a few lines, too, but to find the idea for this solution is rather difficult. Of the 9th Olympiad I have personal memories; I was the youngest member of the Hungarian team. The problems of this Olympiad were collected and partly invented by Miklós Vermes, a legendary and famous Hungarian secondary school physics teacher. In the first problem only the detailed investigation of the stability was unusual, in the second problem one could forget to