The Quantum Coaches team, from Unicamp, won second place in the 13th International Physicists Tournament, a competition that involves challenges and problems in the area of Physics. The final was played between Brazil, Russia and Ukraine last Sunday, July 4, with the Russian team being the best placed. Quantum Coaches comprises six undergraduate and master's students from the Gleb Wataghin Institute of Physics (IFGW), and two team leaders, professors from IFGW. The group became the Brazilian representative in the competition after winning the national, knockout stage, and competed in the world tournament with 11 other countries.
It was the first time that the Unicamp team participated in the international competition, known by the acronym IPT, in English. International Physicists' Tournament. “We are very happy with the result and it was a great confirmation of the potential that our university and our country have to produce quality science”, says the captain of the group, the master's student in Physics Felipe Mazzi.
Professor Leandro Tessler, responsible for promoting the group's idea at Unicamp and one of the team leaders, highlights the importance of the result and highlights the students' commitment to making this happen. “It is a very important feat because it is Brazil's best participation in the history of the championship. Our students are very serious and motivated, this made all the difference. They took their participation seriously and managed to put together a team with excellent knowledge and expertise in Physics.”
Overcoming established teams
Competition in IPT takes place through solving problems that do not yet have a definitive solution in Physics, and also involves knowledge from other areas. Every year the tournament's international organization releases a list of problems, which are also used in the national stage. In the dispute, known as Physics Fights, one team proposes its solution, another presents an opposition and, depending on the dispute, a third presents a review of the problem and a synthesis of the others' proposals. Grades are awarded by a jury, made up of physicists.
The Unicamp team had already been classified in the national stage in 2019, after beating the teams from the University of São Paulo (USP) and the Federal University of ABC (UFABC). However, due to the difficulties of the pandemic, they chose not to compete in the international stage. But, after winning the next round again, the members decided to participate in the 2021 international phase, which took place online. Second place confirmed the team with the best result Brazil has ever had in the tournament.
Felipe points out that the team was surprised by their placement, due to the fact that they competed against teams that already have a tradition in the IPT, a competition that has been taking place for 13 years. “We competed against Russia and Ukraine in the final. Russia is three-time champion and Ukraine is four-time champion. They are very experienced countries, who even invented the tournament, and we caught them right away, in the classification. We competed with the favorites and managed to overcome them”, he assesses.
Maria Carolina Volpato, graduating in Physics and also a member of the team, highlights that the meaning of winning the tournament is especially important in the current context. “This statement is very important given the moment we live in, of denialism. And it shows that even with all the difficulties we managed to do such a well-done job.”
The group that competed in the tournament was made up of students Felipe Mazzi (captain), Maria Carolina Volpato, Leonardo Falabella, Anderson Vulto, Ana Elisa Dellamatrice Barioni and João Pedro Carlini Minchillo. The team leading teachers are Leandro Tessler and Pierre-Louis de Assis. Quantum Coaches was one of the teams with the highest female representation in the competition.
Preparation for the tournament
The starting point for forming a team at Unicamp was the creation of an elective course by professor Leandro Tessler, in 2019. The professor had participated as a judge in the competition, at a national stage, and was excited about the possibility of Unicamp to participate. “I really liked what happened in the tournament, it was very interesting. When I returned to Unicamp I proposed a subject, for undergraduate and master's degrees, in order to form a team for the competition. The subject was in English and when the list of problems came out we started organizing ourselves to divide the problems into groups and solve them”, he says.
In addition to learning Physics, practicing English and learning to work in groups are concomitant learning that the teacher points out as new in the discipline. “She develops what is called soft skills, such as working in a group, organizing a human relationship in a tense situation, having to deal with the mistakes of others and your own. This in a Physics course is something new, as Physics is generally a very individual activity”.
Another important point of the course, according to the professor, is the fact that students have to solve real-world problems, mobilizing theoretical and experimental tools to propose solutions. For those interested, the professor invites them to enroll in the discipline, in which students from any undergraduate or postgraduate course can participate. It will open again, in the second academic semester of 2021, under the code F076 for undergraduate courses and FI266 for postgraduate courses.
Expanding training
The experience of the discipline and the tournament, point out Felipe and Maria Carolina, is enriching, adding learning elements to the training that often do not exist in the curriculum of undergraduate courses. The fact that they have to propose solutions to open problems, dealing experimentally and theoretically with them, carrying out group discussions and having the challenge of communicating solutions clearly and in English are lessons they cite.
“We have contact with experiences that do not exist in the curriculum, which is dealing with problems that have no answer. The main learning is that the process is very close to how science actually happens: finding an unexplained phenomenon, proposing a model, testing this model and then defending it to other teams”, points out Felipe.
For the master's student, all this learning, since the first national competition he participated in, brought more enthusiasm to his training. “It was a milestone in my training, it completely renewed my interest in Physics. What made me choose Physics at the beginning of my undergraduate studies has been renewed. Everything we learn on the course ends up being used in some way in the competition.”
Maria Carolina also highlights the contribution to student autonomy, which also helped her in scientific initiation activities. “It's not taking a book and reproducing the issue, you're going to take a problem and see how to attack that problem, and you're going to spend hours thinking about it. This also helped with my scientific initiation, as the teacher doesn't need to be helping all the time. You create a certain self-sufficiency, an independence to pursue,” she notes.
In a similar way, IFGW professor Pierre Louis de Assis, leader of the group together with professor Leandro, highlights the learning that students can gain from the competition experience. “It's a dueling tournament, it's more competitive and the problem solving is more experimental. Students have to build an experiment, collect data, process data, which is very important for them to learn. Setting up an experiment from scratch and making all the decisions is something we rarely have in graduate school.”
Encouraging the formation of new teams in Brazil
The Quantum Coaches team hopes that new teams will form in the country, to encourage exchanges and raise the level of Brazilian teams. For now, only USP, Unicamp and UFABC have formed groups. UFABC was the pioneer University in participating in the tournaments, and its team was the first to qualify for the international stage. On that occasion, in 2018, they went to the final of the competition and won third place.
In addition to encouraging the formation of other teams, the students also point out that students interested in participating in the Unicamp group can get in touch. “We invite everyone who wants to participate. It doesn't necessarily have to be Physics. Understanding physics is important, but there is another part of development, so we leave it open to anyone who is interested”, says Maria Carolina. Contact can be made via page from Quantum Coaches on Facebook.
For those interested in creating teams at other universities, professors Leandro Tessler and Pierre Louis, who are also members of the tournament's national committee, provide their e-mails for contact: tessler@unicamp.br / plouis@unicamp.br
