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 162 || AWSAR Awarded Popular Science Stories - 2019
Polarized to Converge Light, Medicine and Lives
  Ms. Mahima Sharma BS*
Email: iam16d002@smail.iitm.ac.in
The summer vacation saw a group of four 8-year-olds deeply engrossed in their comics followed by an intense conversation.
“These superheroes are so cool, they go around saving the world every day,” mused one.
“I want to become one when I grow up,” quipped another.
“I don’t think it works like that. You should have some superpower for that,” came the wise response.
Madhu, a research scholar, who overheard their conversations sought this chance to talk about the wonders of science and technology already within the reach of humans and not just restricted to these superhumans. “If you could have a superpower, what would it be?”
she asked.
“Oh, I know. I want to fly like Superman”,
“I want to be as strong as the Wonder Woman”, “Invisibility power for me”, “I want X-ray vision to see through the villain’s weapons,” were the enthusiastic replies.
“Did you know that doctors also see through objects in the body? And that is how they find out if there is something wrong inside the body before trying to fix it,” Madhu quizzed.
“But how do they do it? Do they have super-vision too?” the bunch asked.
Madhu laughed and explained, “Technology has made it possible to look at the internal structures of the body. Have you heard of X-ray, CT or MRI scans?”
“Yes! I had fractured my arm last year and the doctor took an X-ray image of my arm”
 * Ms. Mahima Sharma B. S., PhD Scholar from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, is pursuing her research on “Biomedical Polarimetry”. Her popular science story entitled “Polarized to Converge Light, Medicine and Lives” has been selected for AWSAR Award.


















































































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