Joint Oxford-Imperial team comes second at PLANCKS UK
I Carnot, a joint team from the University of Oxford and Imperial College London, came second in PLANCKS UK 2026.
PLANCKS is annual international theoretical physics competition aimed at undergraduates arranged by the International Association of Physics Students. The competition’s national preliminary, PLANCKS UK, is run by the Institute of Physics, a learned society promoting co-operation in the field.
The competition ran over the weekend starting February 21st at the University of Kent. Participants competed in a team-based competition with long written problem-solving questions on core areas of physics in an exam style alongside guest talks.
Coming second of the 41 participating teams from universities across the UK earns I Carnot a place at PLANCKS International in the Netherlands this May.
Tejas Penugonda, the Imperial student on the team, called the result “a big deal,” explaining that “it’s been a long time since Imperial qualified for Plancks.”
The team in first place, which went by TeamName – rather ambitiously foreseeing their place at the top of the list of teams perhaps – was also from Oxford and received 79 marks to I Carnot’s 74.
