PLANCKS 2019
European Journal of Physics
41
034002
2020
abstract
The sixth edition of the Physics League Across Numerous Countries for Kick-ass Students (PLANCKS)competition was held in the city of Odense, Denmark. The purpose of PLANCKS is to find the most prominent theoretical physics student team in the world. The competition was part of a three-day programme, featuring scientific as well as social events. The scientific programme featured three symposia all containing talks from prominent physicists, most notably the 2001 Nobel Prize laureate Wolfgang Ketterle of MIT. Both the competition and the symposia will enlighten the students about fields of physics which may not be present at their home university. The competition contained a total of 34 teams from 18 countries including the winning team `The Four Vectors' from Germany, and the runners-ups `CV5 Irreducibles' and `Komfur' from Serbia and Denmark respectively. This year's problems featured 10 exciting exercises. Here we present two problems from PLANCKS 2019 and the line of reasoning behind making a PLANCKS problem, which is an opportunity for a scientist to highlight an interesting part of their field to young students.