The Olympiads are like the Olympics, but for academics, not sports. Unlike the Olympics which are held every 4 years, the Olympiads are annual events held in a different country each year. Further, the participation is limited to preuniversity students. These annual international Olympiads are held in a number of subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, junior science, astronomy and astrophysics, and mathematics, among others.
The Olympiads were initiated by teachers and academicians in USSR and the erstwhile east European nations about 50 years ago, in the late 1950s and 1960s. The Mathematics Olympiad was the first to be organized in 1959. Physics and Chemistry followed a decade later, in 1967 and 1968, respectively. Each of these began with half a dozen or less east European nations bringing together about five of their brightest students to a single location and posing a series of challenging tests. This trend has continued with the students being accompanied by two teachers who are...
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© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Singh, V. (2013). Science Olympiad. In: Gunstone, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Science Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6165-0_334-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6165-0_334-1
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