IYPT 1990, Задачи на турнира — Задача 1. Invent yourself ― a physical photo contest

Note [4]

The Russian traditional title «Придумай сам» has been internationally translated as “Think up a problem yourself” at the 6th IYPT, the 7th IYPT, and the 8th IYPT, but later most commonly as “Invent yourself” (at the 9th IYPT, the 10th IYPT, and the 11th IYPT.) “Invent yourself” is also used in the Soviet OC’s translation for the 4th IYPT. Other versions are: “Invent for yourself” (13th IYPT) and “Think for yourselves” (Soviet OC’s translation of the Kvant text for 1989), “Invent it yourself” (1992 translations for the 5th IYPT.) “Your invention” is used in the Soviet OC’s translation for the 3rd IYPT [Jordens 1990]

Notes [1]–[2] — critical edition and text history

[1] These dates are announced in an invitation letter sent on March 15, 1990 to Hungarian team leader Lajos Skrapits [Letter 1990] and confirmed by a booklet giving the schedule of the event [Schedule 1990]

[2] The problems for all Rounds of the 3rd IYPT were initially completed in the Russian language, the primary working language at the entire event (the non-Russian speaking Dutch team, and possibly further teams, were assisted by interpreters [Yufryakov 2008].)

The primary “standard” source for this translation is the Russian version of the Problems for the Correspondence Collective Competition of YPT-XII (Задания заочного коллективного конкурса ТЮФ-ХII) published in Kvant magazine in August 1989 [Kvant 1989], but submitted for publication before May 26, 1989. The early draft of this translation has been performed in November 2007 from this Russian text.

An English translation has been prepared by the Organizing Committee and distributed to non-Soviet teams, at least to the Dutch team. A two-page OCR typeset document titled Third International Young the Physicists’ Tournament / YPT-problems for collective competition by mail coming from Evgeny Yunosov was preserved by Hans Jordens [Jordens 1990].

A textually close, edited, version has been published by Tatyana Korneeva in English-language journal Gifted Talented International [GTI 1991] in 1991, although the contents of the article clearly shows that it was written, and possibly submitted, before the 3rd IYPT held in 1990.

A Czech translation titled Problems for Young Physicists’ Tournament 1989―1990 has been published in Rozhledy mat.-fyz. in September 1990, shortly after the competition [RMF 1990]. The source document is not reported, while the translation is made most probably from the Russian Kvant text. It may be speculated, with no solid grounds, that the editorial board of the journal might have contributed to the translation.

The list of 17 problems in Czech language titled Problems for International Young Physicists’ Tournament. 3. Russia ― Moscow ― 1990 (Úlohy mezinádodního turnaje mladých fyziků. 3. Rusko ― Moskva ― 1990) was published by Zdeněk Kluiber in review book Turnaj Mladých Fyziků in 1996 [Kluiber 1996]. This Czech translation is found to be fully independent from the 1991 version, with quite different style, wording and factual nuances.

A different English version was published in 2006 by Silvina Simeonova in the Proceedings of the 16th IYPT on the basis of a text provided to the publishers by Zdeněk Kluiber [Proceedings 2006]. The year of translation and the source language are not reported. This version, however, relies on the 1996 Czech text (because all factual discrepancies between Czech and Russian versions are kept intact), but relies on the figures from Kvant, directly reproduced from [Kvant 1989].

The known Slovak version [TMF 1996] is titled the Slovak language translation of the RMF text, published in Czech language. There is furthermore all linguistic evidence that the Slovak text follows the 1991 Czech text, as all distinctive features (omitted epigraph in problem No. 11, style of the formulae etc.) are as in the 1991 Czech, not as in the Russian text. The same details confirm that the Slovak text is not related to the 1996 Czech text. The Slovak is linguistically very close to Czech and, to a lesser extent, Russian.

The list of the problems for 1990 was not released on the Evgeny Yunosov's Faraday Tournament website in 2002. The Hungarian version [Rajkovits 2003] is available as well.

As it was explicitly stated in the Kvant publication, the problems of the all-Soviet rounds and International rounds in 1990 were expected to be identical to the problems of the Correspondence Rounds, presented in this document (it was not the case for 1989, when problems at the 2nd IYPT were not the same as at the Correspondence Rounds for Soviet teams.) There is solid evidence from the participants of the competition in June 1990 that this very problem set was discussed at real stages of the 3rd IYPT [Nosov 2009], [Mashkov 2009], [Yufryakov 2008].

Although the English translation made in 1990 might have been recognized by LOC as official, it is now felt appropriate to rely on the original Russian text for the sake of coherence and completeness of the reconstruction; probably only single team was using the English text before and during the 3rd IYPT, and that version thus had a limited social impact as of a “standard English edition”.

The history of text transmission: colors indicate the languages of the sources (black for the Russian, green for the English, red for the Czech, blue for the Slovak, pink for the Hungarian); dotted lines indicate that notable factual inaccuracies were introduced with translation or copying; the tick indicates the version taken as “standard” for the current edition

Note [3]

Translated from the German by Michael M. Metzger (A companion to the works of Rainer Maria Rilke, Boydell & Brewer, 2004, p. 61.) Original version: „Die Siege laden ihn nicht ein. Sein Wachstum ist: der Tiefbesiegte von immer Größerem zu sein” (“Der Schauende”, 1901, Buch der Bilder.) Other known English translations: “This is how we grow: by being defeated, decisively”; “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” The Russian text quotes the translation by Boris Pasternak («Созерцание», пер. Б. Пастернака / Рильке, Р. М. Новые стихотворения. — М.: Наука, 1977). This epigraph is present only in the original Kvant text

Sources

[Kvant 1989] XII Турнир юных физиков // Квант, №8, 1989. ― стр. 76―78

[RMF 1990] Úlohy Turnaje mladých fyziků 1989 ― 1990. Rozhledy matematicko-fyzikální, ročník 69, č. 1 (žáří 1990), 1990―1991, s. 24―27

[Letter 1990] Invitation letter to the 3rd IYPT, dated March 15, 1990, sent to Hungarian delegation leader Lajos Skrapits

[TMF 1996] III. medzinádodný TMF ( 1989 ― 1990 ) // Juraj Braciník, Jozef Brestenský, Miroslav Helbich, Karol Macák. Turnaj mladých fyzikov : štatút a úlohy. Iuventa, Bratislava (1996), s. 27―29

[Rajkovits 2003] Zs. Rajkovits, L. Skrapits, P. Kenesei. Ifjú Fizikusok Nemzetközi Versenye: problémái (1989—2003). Retrieved at http://metal.elte.hu/~dlab/ifnv.doc

[Yufryakov 2008] Private communication with Konstantin Yufryakov, Russian participant in 1990

[Nosov 2009] Private communication with Igor Nosov, Turkmen participant in 1989

[Mashkov 2009] Private communication with Ilya Mashkov, Russian participant in 1990

[Kluiber 1996] Úlohy mezinádodního turnaje mladých fyziků. 3. Rusko ― Moskva ― 1990 // Zdeněk Kluiber. Turnaj Mladých Fyziků. Informace o nádodní i mezinádodní soutěži studentů výrazně talentovaných pro fyziku. Gaudeamus-MAFI, Hradec Králové, 1996, s. 24―25

[Proceedings 2006] Problems for the 3rd IYPT. In: Proceedings of the 19th IYPT 2006 (eds Silvina Simeonova, Myeung Hoi Kwon, Zvezdi, Sofia 2007), pp. 235‒237

[Jordens 1990] Third International Young the Physicists Tournament / YPT-problems for collective competition by mail, an English translation of the problems provided by LOC to Hans Jordens in 1989 or 1990, OCR

[GTI 1991] T. D. Korneeva et al. Young Physicists’ Tournament (YPT): A collective competition. Gifted Talented International, 7, 1‒2, 86‒95 (1991)

[Schedule 1990] III Международный турнир юных физиков. Москва. Молодежный центр "Олимпиец" (7—14 июня 1990 г.)

Edition credits

Translated, edited and commented by Ilya Martchenko. Originally translated and released in November 2007, revisions made until May 2011. This edition would never have been prepared without the early work in copying, translating, publishing and preserving problems, made in different years by Evgeny Yunosov, Zdeněk Kluiber, Jozef Brestenský, Zsuzsanna Rajkovits, Hans Jordens, Jaroslav Zhouf, Martin Plesch and others, without important factual details on the 3rd IYPT provided by Konstantin Yufryakov and Ilya Mashkov, without proofreading and valuable suggestions made by Matej Ftáčnik, Tymofii Nikolaienko, Timotheus Hell, and Dahl Winters.

Authors of the IYPT problems were often reported in late 1980s and early 1990s. The Kvant and the Gifted Talented International texts name them: S. D. Varlamov, T. P. Korneeva, A. Yu. Kusenko, M. Yu. Nikolaev, A. V. Rakhmanov, M. V. Stolyarov, M. M. Tsypin, E. N. Yunosov.

Everyone who may shed more light on early IYPTs is kindly invited to contribute.