Reaching for the stars

May 28, 2010 - AGE CORRESPONDENT

Aakanksha Sarda is not your regular teeny bopper who likes hanging out with her friends after college only to bury herself deep in chick-lit later. This 18-year-old holds the distinction of being among the shortlisted five to represent India in the International Physics Olympiad to be held in Croatia in July and only the second Indian girl to qualify ever. Quirky yet smart, the girl seems all set to rewrite history if she bags the gold on the international podium even as a billion Indians root for her.
Not always the one with a soft corner for Physics, the teenager is quick to decline the subject as her first love, it is mathematics that is her passion. “I am interested in a whole lot of things from mathematics, computers, linguistics to literature. I really don’t know what to become. I am going to Massachusetts Institute of Technology next year where I will sample a lot of subjects for two years. I am driven by logic.” A movie buff to the core, the young genius loves to catch about three to four movies on the big screen in a week. The teenager shares her inputs on life and physics, “It is not about cracking just the 100 questions from a tough physics book, it is about understanding the logic behind it. We have great theorists even among our faculty, but it is the practical application that seems to be tested at higher levels.”
This child prodigy from Mumbai was given a black box as part of an optical test, which had a few instruments randomly dumped inside. She was asked to discover the orientation of the instrument and infer experiments all with the help of just a flashlight. The 18-year-old aced all that they threw at her.
With a drive and creativity like her’s, the world is watching out for this young talent.

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