A blink of tears came in the eyes of 17, 18-year-olds when the entire stadium at Lisbon (Portugal) stood at the national anthem of India. A team of students won five gold medals at the recent 49th International Physics Olympiad (IPhO 2018), ending 21 years of drought for India. These five students competed with a total of 396 candidates from 86 other nations at the event held in July this year. In the physics team, two boys from Kota (Lay Jain and Pawan Goyal), one from Mumbai (Bhaskar Gupta), one from Rajkot (Nishant Abhangi) and another one from Kolkata (Siddharth Tiwary) bagged gold.
India also achieved two golds and two silvers at Chemistry Olympiad and four silvers at International Biology Olympiad. “This is an extraordinary performance as these students have shown confidence and patience at such a young age,” said the leader of the Indian team at Physics Olympiad, Praveen Pathak.
The Indian team got stiff competition from China. “This year, the cut-off was 35 out of 50, the participants of both the teams of have scored above 98 per cent, thus sharing the top position at the international stage,” said Pathak.
Siddharth Tiwary, a team member, is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in physics from IIT-Bombay. “From Class 8, I started preparing for the JEE Advanced along with the Olympiad. Apart from solving the problems from Irodov’s Physics book, I also studied Russian books to understand the exam pattern for the Olympiad,” he said.
Before getting the stage of an International Olympiad, the students have to first crack the Indian Physics Olympiad. Siddharth Tiwary suggested all aspirants to focus on national Physics Olympiad. “The questions there mainly followed the CBSE and NCERT pattern. So students of all boards have to go through the NCERT books and solve previous years problems of the Physics Olympiad. Apart from it, one can solve problems from Irodo’s Physics book and can follow Russian or Germany’s books on Olympiad,” said Siddharth.
Another participant, Nishant Abhangi is busy preparing for the JEE Advanced 2019. “It was a proud moment getting such a prestigious award. I started preparing after Class 10 and completed my plus 2 Physics syllabus within six months,” he said. Nishant wants to pursue computer science engineering either from IITs or foreign university.
For those aiming to appear for such international olympiads, Praveen Pathak suggested that students should have clear concepts. “Students mainly faced difficulty in practical experiments as our syllabus put a less focus on practical part. One who has a clear concept of the theory and problems can easily crack the theory part of the Olympiad.”
News Source (Indian Express)