Indian team bags 5 gold medals at International Physics Olympiad 2018

NEW DELHI, JULY 31- Each student from the Indian team participating in International Physics Olympiad 2018 (IPhO) have brought home gold medals. The five students who represented India in the 49th IPhO 2018 are Lay Jain and Pawan Goyal from Kota, Bhaskar Gupta from Mumbai, Nishant Abhangi from Rajkot and Siddharth Tiwari from Kolkata. Lay Jain and Pawan Goyal are among the top 10 rankers for JEE Advanced 2018. Nishant Abhangi is the youngest among the five and is a student of class XII. Homi Bhabha Centre, Mumbai selected these five students through a rigorous selection process and will felicitate the team on July 31. 

As per media reports, not only did the Indian boys perform exceptionally well; this has been the country’s best performance in the preceding 21 years of participation since 1988. In three previous Olympiads, India had managed to bag four gold medals and a silver. IPhO 2018 was held from July 21 to 28 in Lisbon, Portugal. 

The selection process comprised a theory exam and an experimental exam, held for a duration of five hours each.  The theoretical exam was comparatively less difficult than the experimental and carried questions from topics such as the physics of blood flow in living tissues and growth of tumours, the ATLAS instrument at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and LIGO detection of gravitational waves.

Apart from India, China is another participating country that won five gold medals this year. Reportedly, 396 students from 86 countries all over the world participated in the Physics Olympiads.