This is the VOA Special English Education Report.

More than three hundred secondary school students competed in the thirty-eighth International Physics Olympiad last month in Iran. They came from seventy-three countries, including the United States.

Students from China had the top results: four gold medals and one silver. Russia was second with three gold, one silver and one honorable mention.

Next came the United States and South Korea. Each team brought home two gold medals and three silver medals. And the teams from Iran and Japan had two gold, two silver and one bronze medal each.

The ten-day Olympiad took place in the ancient city of Isfahan. There were written examinations and laboratory experiments as well as discussion meetings.

And there was news of the death in Isfahan of the president of the International Physics Olympiad. Waldemar Gorzkowski was sixty-seven years old. The Iranian Students News Agency said he died of a heart attack. He led the Olympiad for many years.

The physics competition is one of the International Science Olympiads held around the world.

The American Association of Physics Teachers and the American Institute of Physics choose members of the United States team. Physics teachers across the country nominate students and committees choose about two hundred of them. The students take additional tests to choose the twenty-four members of the team.

In May the members attend the United States Physics Team Training Camp at the University of Maryland. They go through nine days of intensive studying, testing and problem solving. At the end of the camp, five members of the team are chosen to travel to the Olympiad.

The five this year were Kenan Diab of Ohio, Rui Hu of Delaware, Jenny Kwan from California, Jason LaRue of Florida and Haofei Wei from Oklahoma. All five won medals.

The first International Physics Olympiad took place in Warsaw, Poland, in nineteen sixty-seven. Until the early nineteen eighties it was held only in the former communist countries of eastern Europe. The United States organized a team for the first time in nineteen eighty-six.

And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, written by Nancy Steinbach. To learn about the American education system, go to voaspecialenglish.com where you can find transcripts and archives of our reports. I'm Steve Ember.