Explorer Competition
What is it?
Every year, hundreds of high school-level students from around the globe form teams and compete by responding to an open-ended research-based assignment containing questions inspired by groundbreaking discoveries in physics, and submit their work after a two week-long period in the form of a report. This event is called the Physics Unlimited Explorer Competition.The 2021 Explorer Competition took place in February/March. Beginning with the 2022 edition the event takes place in April.
2022 Explorer scores
The official list with teams' scores has been released here. A subset of contributed papers will be published and linked from this page once we receive explicit permissions from all teams who would like to make their submissions public.Congratulations to teams Dr. Sheldon Cooper for first place, AceD and Principally uncertain for second place (tie), SciTech for third place, and all the honorable mentions. We will be reaching out to all teams individually with their certificates.
2022 Explorer assignment
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The 2020 Explorer Competition consisted of a single assignment on orbital resonance. Please see this page to view the details and results.
The 2018 Explorer Competition consisted of a two-part assignment, with one section on quantum mechanics and one section on statistical mechanics. Please see this page to view the assignment details and results.
Physics Unlimited's inaugural team-based Explorer Competition took place in November/December 2017.
Please see this archived page to view the assignments and results from that event.