By Sajitha Prematunge
Oblivious to the laws of physics and before he could even grasp the meaning of the word velocity, he tried to calculate the speed of the bus he was travelling in, by taking into account how long it took the bus to travel between two lamp posts. He was just seven years old then. By grade three he was trying to calculate the light year longhand. It’s not rocket science, it was just a matter of multiplying how far light travelled in a second, by how many seconds there are in a year. But for an eight-year-old to even entertain such an idea, while his peers were still playing cops and robbers, is uncanny.