The New Zealand team of Ben Paterson (King’s College), Graeme Finnie (Onslow College), Donald White (Pakuranga College), Jed Bian (Auckland Grammar School) and Yang Gao (Auckland Grammar School) have recently returned from Croatia with silver medals won at the 21st International Young Physicists’ Tournament. This is the second year in a row that the New Zealand team have come away from the tournament with silver medals and we are the only team to make it to the finals in both years.

After the first round of competition New Zealand lay in 8th place and by the end of the fourth round we were in 5th place. In the fifth and last round the team performed outstandingly, scoring the best score of any of the teams over the five rounds. We leapfrogged Croatia, Austria and Korea to end in 2nd place. This took the team to the final with Germany and Croatia. Here the teamed performed well but was not able to topple Germany who took the gold medal. Croatia and New Zealand, as the other two finalists, were both awarded silver medals.