How does this advent calendar work?
You call it playing, we call it doing experiments. With "PiA - Physics in advent", we created a special and unique kind of advent calendar: a physical advent calendar. We introduce young scientists, and everyone who has fun with it, to 24 simple and yet ingenious experiments and physics puzzles. They will arouse interest in doing experiments for yourself and ignite excitement within any observer. From 1st to 24th December 2015, we present a little experiment as video clip every day. You can do the experiment yourself at home and answer the question on our web page throught the day before seeing the solution video the next day. Eligible are students in school years 5 to 10, complete school classes and entire schools. Join-in and win! In addition to fun with experiments you can also win prizes. We draw prizes among the best participants in the categories individuals, and in addition among the best school classes and schools. Furthermore, every participant or every participating team or class receives a certificate with their achievements for download and print-out.
We will release the question videos every morning at 5:00 CET in the morning (12:00 lunch time in Hong Kong) and show them on our web page. You can then submit your answer on our web page throughout the day until 23:00 (16:00 in the afternoon in Chicago) via multiple-choice buttons. Exceptions therein are questions on Saturday and Sunday. You can submit their corresponding answers until the subsequent Monday evening, 23:00. We release the solution videos at 5:00 in the morning following the submission deadline. You can see them again on our web page.
Since you can presumably not do all experiments, for example because you might have to do homework or have other hobbies, we offer three jokers. As long as you still have some, the jokers cover a solution automatically in case you did not submit an answer or in case it is not correct.
This year, for the first time, we offer "PiA - Physics in Advent" also for adults . You simply register individually and form in a second step a group (one of your group needs to register as team leader and send the other team members the team code). We evaluate your answers and provide a ranking within your team after Christmas. The only difference to the student participants is that you need to organise your prizes yourself, for example by paying a few Euros into your local PiA-box in November and to distribute the profits according to the final ranking after 24th December. Have fun with it!