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SOFU / Prep RoomSchool Science Clubs · Tournament Tools

School Science Fights / Release 02

Run your own
Science Fight.

Plan the school mock, generate fair pairings, deploy jurors, run each room, record independent scores and produce a validated result sheet — all without an account.

● Private by design: names and conflict declarations stay in this browser unless you choose to export them.

01 / PREPAREBefore generating a single pairing

Plan the tournament.
Week by week.

Give your science club time to investigate, prepare and practise. Follow a clear timetable before opening the pairing generator.

WEEK-BY-WEEK ORGANISER ROADMAP

Work backwards from tournament day.

Choose your preparation period and mark off each action as it is completed. The roadmap covers scientific preparation, people, rooms, pairings, and the actual competition day. It complements the live tournament workbench below.

Set a date in Tournament Setup to see your calendar deadlines.
YOUR PREPARATION PROGRESS0 of 28 actions completed

Start with the six-week preparation plan

Week 1: Agree on the event format and organising roles. Week 2: Approve and release safe, open-ended problems. Week 3: Support students' investigations. Week 4: Confirm jurors, teams, rooms and equipment. Week 5: Validate pairings and rehearse the Fight format. Week 6: Run the event, verify results and debrief.

Planning note: Week allocations are recommendations, not official SOFU deadlines. Compressed plans retain all essential tasks; they simply combine more work into each week. Completed tasks are included in your private planner project download.

Open tournament generator
AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONThis is a school mock, not a full IYPT/IYNT tournament.

Two or three preliminary-style Science Fights only. Every team completes its roles, and there are no quarter-finals, semi-finals or grand final options.

Review the Fight Academy ↗
02 / DESIGN PROBLEMSScientific depth before spectacle

Write problems worth
investigating.

Science Fight problems should invite students to observe, measure, explain and challenge a phenomenon. They should not simply demand a textbook definition or an impossible invention.

The five-question quality test

  1. Observable? Can students reproduce or safely investigate a meaningful part of the phenomenon?
  2. Variable? Are there parameters students can deliberately change?
  3. Measurable? Can students gather evidence and represent it systematically?
  4. Explainable? Can theory predict trends that students compare with results?
  5. Open-ended? Can different teams develop defensible approaches and discuss limitations?
BEFORE / AFTER
WEAK PROMPT

Why do paper helicopters fall?

Invites a short explanation, but offers little investigative direction.
STRONGER PHYSICS PROBLEM

A paper helicopter falls while rotating. Construct paper helicopters and investigate how blade dimensions and added mass affect their descent. Develop a model that explains your observations and its limitations.

Physical investigation · variables · measurements · model
BIOLOGYSeed germination

Investigate how a chosen environmental factor influences germination, using repeated groups and a suitable measure of success. Consider what the evidence cannot establish.

CHEMISTRYEffervescence

Investigate how a safely chosen variable affects the rate of gas release from an effervescent tablet in water. Model the observed trend and explain controls.

PHYSICSPaper helicopter

Vary blade geometry and mass, measure descent time across repeated drops and compare with a simplified aerodynamic model.

INTERACTIVE CHECKLIST / ORGANISER PRACTICE

Does your proposed problem make a good Science Fight?

Choose the criteria your draft genuinely meets. This is a reflective quality check, not an automated scientific certification. A weak criterion tells you what to revise before giving the problem to teams.

0 of 5 considered

Start by checking whether the proposed phenomenon is observable and safe to investigate.

How to revise a weak problem +

Begin with something observable. Ask teams to investigate how a condition changes it, build an explanation and compare that explanation with evidence. Do not prescribe the whole apparatus or expected answer.

Biology: Compare germination under measurable, safe changes in water availability; use repeats and define what counts as germination.

Chemistry: Investigate a safe effervescence reaction by varying water temperature; measure a rate proxy, and discuss why it is imperfect.

Physics: Change paper-helicopter blade size and attached mass; quantify descent and rotation, then compare with a simplified model.

Final editorial test: Could two well-prepared teams legitimately arrive with different models or methods worth debating?

For safety and fairness, organisers should approve all proposed experiments, materials and venues before releasing a problem. Simulations can complement experiments but are not a substitute for independent evidence.

03 / BUILD YOUR TOURNAMENTEverything runs in your browser

The tournament
workbench.

Choose your format, register teams and jurors, then generate a schedule that checks role rotation, repeated opponents and declared conflicts.

TOURNAMENT WORKSPACEUntitled school mock
STEP 01

What kind of tournament are you organising?

Your choice determines which team affiliations the pairing engine tries to separate. For example, an inter-house tournament should minimise rooms containing teams from the same house. General tournaments do not use affiliation separation.

In a three-round mock, every team takes Reporter, Opponent and Reviewer once. Teams must come in multiples of three.
Only the two- and three-round SOFU school formats are supported.
ONE MORE THING

Give your students
the science.

The planner handles logistics. The quality of the mock still depends on clear problems, fair jurors, honest data, meaningful experiments and thoughtful scientific discussion.

Open Fight Academy ↗