After a successful debut last year in Jena, the “Triphysics Tournament” returned for its second installment in Ilmenau. On 24th of October 2025 physicists from the three participating universities: Halle, Jena and Ilmenau came together yet again in a contest of knowledge and skill.
The backdrop of this year’s Triphysics Tournament was the cozy upper floors of the Faraday building. Members from the “Young DPG” regional groups, which had organized the tournament, decorated the room for the competition and checked in the guests. Each team now assembled their 4 champions for the competition. The students didn’t have to fight for the honor of their university’s team on their own, but also got support from their profs 1 : Matthias Maiberger and Rouven Dreyer traveled with their students to fight in the team of Halle, Martin Gärttner made his way from Jena to join the competition, and Anke Sander and Marcus Bose entered the tournament for Ilmenau. A total of 31 people came in for the event, with the non-players observing from the ranks and cheering for their team.
Like its predecessor, the competition was split into 3 differently themed parts. The first challenges in the category of “Divination” featured games like quizzes and riddles, in which the participants had to show their knowledge both in the realm of physics as well as general trivia — or sometimes simply had to give the best educated guesses.
After a quick break to grab some much needed coffee, the teams faced the next challenges in the category “Defense against the Dark Performing Arts”: a round of pantomiming was good fun for the whole room and a competition in writing to the blackboard both beautifully and correctly got the universities’ profs sweating.
For the last part of the tournament, themed “Transfiguration”, the teams had to prove their skills in hands-on creativity and problem solving. First they had to build marble runs according to different criteria: one had to go on for as long as possible without stopping, and another had to keep the marble rolling for precisely three seconds, making the winner whoever came closest to that mark. There was however a little obstacle: for the second task the teams were not allowed to test their marble runs in any way before the final evaluation. As a final challenge every team had to improvise a flying machine from only few available materials, competing in whose construct would spend the most time airborne.
After three and a half hours the tournament came to a close, and a winner emerged: the team from Ilmenau came out on top and now holds onto the challenge cup until a new team of champions wins the next Triphysics Tournament.
In the spirit of the friendly competition, which is also intended as an event to bring students of the different universities together, the “Freunde und Förderer der Naturwissenschaften in Ilmenau e.V.” association sponsored a barbecue, so the students and profs could come together at the grill, have a cold beer, and get to know each other in a relaxed atmosphere.
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1 "Profs" stands for "professionals" in jDPG parlance, and is an inclusive term that covers all teaching staff, not just those with a formal title.
