Basic Information About FYKOS
What is FYKOS?
FYKOS is an Internet physics competition. It is one of best ways to teach physics to talented high-school students (like you) at a level that ordinary high schools can hardly provide. FYKOS makes the students think about physics problems and serch for original solutions to them. It gives the participants an opportunity to meet other students sharing their interests, and also an opportunity to compete with them. FYKOS is a great preparation for other physics competitions, such as the Physics Olympiad. Participants of FYKOS are usually very successful university students later.
FYKOS is organised by a few students from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University in Prague and supported by the Institute of Theoretical Physics.
How does it work?
A FYKOS problem set contains various kind of problems - two easy theoretical (No. 1-2, usually 2 points, points for Grade 1 and 2 are doubled), three complex theoretical (No. 3-5, 3-5 points), one experimental (Exp, 8 points), one problematical (P, 3-6 points) and one to the current study topic (S, 4-6 points).
Unfortunately, the text of the serial is only available in Czech – it will change as soon as we have more English-writing participants. However, it is not essential for solving the seventh problem.
There are six problem sets during the school year, for each about one month to solve. Corrected solutions are sent back to you along with our suggested solutions and seven new problems.
The best students meet twice a year on a week camp somewhere in the Czech Republic, containing mostly games, physics and puzzles.
So how can I take part?
If you are a secondary school student (usually 14-18 years old), just send us solutions to some problems. Probably you will use e-mail but it is possible to use the ordinary mail as well. We will add you to our database and send you the next set of problems, your corrected solutions, "suggested" solutions, rankings etc. Then there are some basic rules to follow.
