Polish students won as many as 7 medals in the 10th Baltic Geography Olympiad (Baltic iGeo) for high school students, which had its last exam in Toruń. The winner was Jacek Jędraszko from the Second High School in Warsaw. 32 of the best young geographers from Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland took part in the competition.

The tenth-anniversary competition of the Baltic Geographical Olympiad (Baltic iGeo) was held in Torun from June 25-29, 2024. The competition was attended by 32 high school students from Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland selected in the national geographic contests.

The competition was conducted in English and consisted of a written test, field activities and a multimedia quiz. The written tasks covered such topics as karst formation processes, the use of palm oil and hydrogen car technologies. 

An important part of the competition was fieldwork – the first field activities took place near the winter port on the Vistula River in Toruń and concerned mapping closed areas. Other tasks were conducted during a tour of the Vistula Landscape Park – at the Talerzyk Grodzisko, the Olęder homestead in Chrystkowo and the market square in Chełmno, where, among other tasks, the volume of the town hall had to be measured in ‘Chełmno cubic rods’ – a historic measurement unit used in the region. The multimedia quiz included 30 single-choice tasks in physical and socio-economic geography.

The organiser of the 10th Baltic Geographical Olympiad was the Polish Geographical Society, which is also the organiser of the nationwide Geographical Olympics for secondary school students.

The Baltic Geographical Olympics are also a form of preparation for the 20th International Geographical Olympiad, which will be held in Ireland this August.

Photos: gov.pl

Tomasz Modrzejewski