POPTOR

The International Physics Olympiad is an annual competition among secondary school students from over 60 countries.

The 2009 Olympiad was held in Merida (Mexico) in July. Pictures from Canadian Team's journey are now available. Every year POPTOR students contribute to the Canadian IPhO team success with their prizes and awards.

We are very pleased to announce that POPTOR 2009 finalists Jixuan Wang won the silver medal, and Jonathan Zung won a bronze medal and Zhaoxi Michael Zhang won a honorary mention at the 2009 IPhO! For their picture follow here.

To be selected for the National Team the Ontario students participating in POPTOR must succeed in POPTOR and CAP Exam. Visit Canadian Chemistry and Physics Olympiads - National Programme for more information about CAP Exam. If high school teachers do not hear from CAP about the High School CAP Exam by the middle of February please contact Dr. Jean-Marc Noel, Royal Military College, jean-marc.noel@rmc.ca.  Students of Grades 9-10 should also consider the Michael Smith Science Challenge. Visit http://www.smithchallenge.ubc.ca/. You can find more about Canadian Science and Mathematical competitions on the Vector web site.

What is POPTOR?

Every year, Canada conducts a search to identify the most capable high school science students. Five students are chosen to form the Canadian team to participate in the International Physics Olympiad, an annual competition among secondary school students.
The XXXXI International Physics Olympiad will be held in Zagreb Croatia from July 17 - 25, 2010.

The Department of Physics at the University of Toronto runs a nine-month preparation program for students in Ontario. This program, known as the Physics Olympiad Preparation Program (POPTOR for short), helps science students 'gear up' for the national competition and provides all Ontario high-school students with an excellent and interesting opportunity to broaden their exposure to physics. In spite the fact that POPTOR offers the problems involving Grade 12 Physics and Mathematics, we also invite students from Grades 11 and 10 and encourage them to master the problems beyond their Physics curriculum. This experience will certainly help to advance in Science and probably to win the next year POPTOR competition.

POPTOR consists of six graded problem sets assigned throughout the year, followed by a training and selection camp in May (POPTOR Weekend) at the University of Toronto. Since the Faculty of Arts and Science and the Department of Physics pay all the costs, participation in POPTOR is always free for the students.

For more information on POPTOR,  please follow here.

The University of Toronto also runs a preparation program for the International Chemistry Olympiad.

POPTOR 2009/2010

Greetings from the whole POPTOR team! We are starting up again. You can find out how things work by looking at our registration materials page. If you're a student and don't have a liaison teacher or other adviser, please email us and we can register you directly.

Check out our current problem set page for information on the 2009/2010 problem sets. 
Start by having fun with these questions and ideas, and maybe you'll find yourself on the National Team, going to IPhO next summer

We invite POPTOR students with their own Physics problems to a supplementary contest. Authors of the best problems will be awarded regardless of their POPTOR results. The best problems of the previous years participants may be included in our problem sets. The 2007/2008 winner was Junjiajia (Bill) Long.  For the list of previous years winners follow here.

Notice Board

• The registration materials are available. 
• The 2010 POPTOR Weekend: May TBA. 

Photos of Invitational Weekend Training & Selection Camps

Pictures from the 2009 Weekend are now available here. Pictures from POPTOR Weekends are here (2008), here (2007) , here (2006) and here (2005) . We also have photos of the POPTOR Weekend from a few years ago.

2009 POPTOR weekend

You may also view the program of the 2006 Weekend and program of the 2005 Weekend.
If you see a problem, please let us know: poptor@physics.utoronto.ca
If you have a compliment, please let us know that, too!

Last revised: August 11, 2009