1. A participant must know Russian and/or English, or be able to use interpreting services.
2. A participant must have a valid e-mail address.
3. It is worth having a comfortable place for work.
4. A personal computer with stable internet connection is necessary for each participant during the entire tournament on the 28 of September, 2014 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Moscow time or from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. PDT.
5. A printer may be needed for tasks printing (it is more convenient for participants to read tasks from the paper).
6. It is desirable to have a scanner and / or a digital camera to scan or photograph and send the work (or parts of it) written on paper. The scanned image is accepted only in one of the following formats: JPG, GIF, PNG.
A participant must be able to use all office equipment described above, or be accompanied by someone (parents, teachers — this applies particularly to younger students).
Taken into consideration that the tournament is time-limited, is it advised to setup and check all of the equipment in advance.
The tournament takes place on Sunday, September 28, 2014.
To participate, first of all you must get registered and know your username and password.
On the day of the Tournament (September 28, 2014) you need to log on at the Tournament website http://2014.online.turlom.info using your login and password. To start the work you need to click the link in your personal account. Tasks are available from 10:00 a.m. Moscow time on September 28, 2014 and from 11:00 a.m. PDT.
Assignments are available in HTML (normal web page) and PDF (made up on a sheet of paper A4), as they can be seen from the screen, and (if it is more convenient) to be printed. All assignments will be published in Russian and in English. At the start time you need to select the appropriate version of the Tournament — "in Russian" or "in English". Should you participate in both language versions, the best of results will be counted.
Completed assignments are submitted in electronic form in the system interface of the Tournament from 10.00 to 16.00 (Moscow time) on September 28, 2014. You also can submit your assignment from 11.00 to 17.00 PDT if this time zone suites you more.
You can start your work at any time after 10:00 MSK (or 11:00 PDT). However, the deadline for work submission is 16:00 MSK (or 17:00 PDT) and no works will be accepted after that time.
If during the performance a disconnection happened or you accidentally closed a window with a task - do not worry. You can re-login to your personal account and continue the performance before 4:00 p.m. MSK (or 5:00 p.m. PDT). All previously stored answers and attached image files are saved (the only text that may be lost is the one you were typing at the time when disconnection has happened).
For each task there is a text box where you can type, paste and edit the text of your solution. You can use Russian, Latin and Greek letters, common punctuation marks and letters needed to write answers in Linguistics competition (they can be copied from the assignment).
The formulas can be entered in a line, using clear text symbols, such as:
2KMnO4 + 3K2SO3 + H2O = 3K2SO4 + 2MnO2 + 2KOH
sin^2(x) + cos^2(x) = 1
m = m0/(1-(v^2/c^2))^0.5
SQRT(3+2*SQRT(2))-SQRT(2) = 1
If you want to add something more than just a text, it is possible to upload one or more image files (pictures) for each solution. Usually images are used for geometric drawings, diagrams, tables, biological drawings and all that can't be typed as a text. You can perform the necessary drawings on paper and then scan, or just create an electronic form.
Also, if desired, the solution can be written entirely by hand (as in the regular competition), then scanned (or photographed) or typed on a computer in any convenient way and converted into images.
Each graphic file (picture) should be no larger than 1 megabyte, only JPG (JPEG) or GIF or PNG, color or grayscale. Each image file should contain only one image (one graphic page, one frame). Multi-image files, animated graphics, stereo (3D) and other similar technical capabilities that impede work checking should not be used.
Other file formats (e.g. PDF and Microsoft Word) will not be accepted, those files should be converted page-by-page into images.
All the limitations associated with the making of work are based on the experience of the Olympiads. They guarantee that the jury is able to see (and evaluate) the work in exactly the same form as it is performed by a participant.
Please, use ordinary white paper or paper from an exercise book for the answers you are going to scan or photograph. The use of grey, colored, wrinkled and dirty paper makes it harder to check the work. Please, make your notes only on one side of the paper and put the paper in the scanner only in one layer (otherwise text written on the other sheets is scanned altogether with the text written on the first one, it is not easy to read the scan).
All assignments are made for individual performance. Assessment and award criteria are composed on the basis of this assumption. Therefore it is evident that the collective performance of these tasks does not make sense; the scoring and points (and probably the certificate given for the successful performance) would not have anything to do with a student who put their name on the teamwork. The more it applies to work performed by parents and teachers.
Dealing with multiple instances of collective work (made by different authors) makes it more difficult to give objective scores and points. Repeated and copied parts are well seen while checking, so if a jury finds the same text in different works, the jury concludes that the work is done unfair. The same is applicable for materials copied from various articles published in the Internet, taken from encyclopedias, directories, forums, and so on. Each participant finds and uses the materials individually but as a result participants copy texts from the same sources and the jury has to check the dozens and even hundreds of the same texts.
It is not bad to perform work collectively but it is worth well doing only if tasks, rules and criteria are made with taking into consideration the possibility of collective work performance. The Tournament tasks and criteria are made for individual work only.
Based on the foregoing, the juries will void the works of violators.
If you want to attach any illustration to your answer (pictures, tables, images, graphics, image of art or architecture, etc.), you must create an illustration entirely yourself and do not use ready-made materials available on the Internet. The decision to ban the use of other people's pictures is issued due to the following reasons: