Five high-school contestants from Hà Nội, Việt Nam, participating in the IdPhO have scored medals. — VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — All five students in the Vietnamese team at the International distributed Physics Olympiad (IdPhO) 2020 have won medals, with four silver and one bronze.

The silver medalists are Trang Đào Công Minh (12th grader), Vũ Ngô Hoàng Dương (10th grader), and Lê Minh Hoàng (10th grader) from the High School for Gifted Students under Việt Nam National University – Hà Nội, and Nguyễn Khắc Hải Long, a student at the Hà Nội National University of Education’s High School for Gifted Students.

Meanwhile, the bronze medal went to Nguyễn Lê Đức Hoàng, a 12th grade student from the Hà Nội-Amsterdam High School.

The IdPhO 2020 was organised virtually from December 7-15 in accordance with an initiative by the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology as an alternative to the annual International Physics Olympiad (IPhO), which was originally slated to be held in Latvia but was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The IdPhO 2020 test format is the same as the annual IPhO, and the contestants do their tests under the supervision of observers by the organising committee sent to each participating country.

This year also marks the first time Việt Nam sent 10th grade students to take part in the tests but they all performed well.

Although they missed the 51st IPhO, Vietnamese students had two opportunities to compete at international physics competitions, including the 2020 European Physics Olympiad (EuPhO) and the IdPhO 2020.

Four of the five Vietnamese students participating in this year’s EuPhO won one gold, one silver, and two bronze medals.

At the IPhO last year, the Vietnamese team brought home three gold medals and two silvers. — VNS