The Stories

Saat ini hujan sedang mengguyur tempat aku berdiam diri. Aku beranjak dari kamar tidurku bergegas menuju halaman depan, melihat hujan, melihat air yang jatuh menghujam ke tanah, begitu deras tanpa ampun. Aku tertawa girang, How wonderful it is…

Sekejap saja, aku ingin memutar marching season kemudian berjinkrak-jinkrak berdansa dengan air hujan, It must be amazing…

Namun hujan kembali mereda, jalanan kembali ramai dan tapak-tapak kaki manusia kembali bermunculan. Sekelompok anak kecil tertawa-tawa, bersiul-siul, mencoba kembali menerbangkan layangannya berharap seandainya saja hujan tidak turun kembali. It must be life, full of paradox…

Matahari segera saja bersinar, langit kembali menjadi cerah berwarna biru, berwarna orange ketika senja tiba, temaram. Sisa-sisa hujan masih tampak dalam pelupuk mata, bulir-bulir air hujan masih melekat dan terkadang berkilauan diterpa sinar matahari. Aku meniup nafas dalam-dalam, memejamkan mata kemudian menengadahkan kepala ke langit seraya merentangkan kedua tangan, mengayun, berputar pada poros kaki. Terus dan terus berputar…

“Music is all around us, All you have to do is listen” – August Rush

(to be continued…)

Fisika Dan Bursa “Kerja” ?*

Suatu kali saya pernah ditanya oleh seorang siswa SMA kelas 3 “Kak, kalo abis lulus dari Fisika nanti kerjanya dimana?”, Deg… Sejujurnya pertanyaan semacam itu sangat menyulitkan sekali [sudah “sangat” pake kata “sekali” lagi heu…] para mahasiswa Fisika seperti saya dan mungkin bagi sebagian besar Mahasiswa Fisika di negeri kita tercinta ini [kayaknya sama sulitnya deh sama soal ujian mekanika kuantum Pak Triyanta kemaren yah? heuheu…piss ah…jangan pipis sembarangan tapi- pinjem istilah Ahmad Ridwan]. Saya ingat sekali cerita beberapa teman saya dari Fisika saat berkunjung ke bursa kerja ITB di Aula Barat beberapa bulan yang lalu, mereka bilang sangat sedikit perusahaan yang memerlukan seorang lulusan Fisika dan itu pun bukan perusahaan besar. Sebagian besar perusahaan itu membutuhkan seorang engineer atau seorang ahli rekayasa

“Dicari seorang lulusan Teknik anu, anu, dan anu…”

Kemudian waktu itu [di perpustakaan Fisika] saya membaca buku kumpulan profil alumni ITB angkatan 70-an yang dibagi ke dalam tiga jilid tebal. Isinya tentu saja kisah sukses alumni 70-an tersebut berikut wejangan-wejangan bagi mahasiswa ITB. Halaman pertama seingat saya alumni teknik arsitektur…halaman berikutnya teknik anu…teknik anu lagi…teknik anu lagi…dan akhirnya ketemu juga profil dua orang alumni Fisika era 70-an itu. Salah satunya sebagai pemilik biro perjalanan haji dan satu lagi bekerja di bidang manajemen. Lalu apa yang mereka tulis di buku profil tersebut? Mereka bilang pengembangan soft skills itu lebih penting daripada belajar Fisika [intinya mungkin mereka pengen bilang kalo gak ada gunanya sayah belajar Fisika toh emang gak kepake…tapi mungkin gak tega juga kalo ngomong kayak gitu heuheu…]. Trus yang lebih mengkhawatirkan lagi [saya bukannya nakut-nakutin lho…] temen saya cerita pas lagi “nongkrong” di Gelap Nyawang alias Nyawang ketemu sama alumni Fisika Universitas Anu di Bandung [tahu sendiri lah yang mana yang jelas bukan ITeBeh] yang terlihat murung alias lagi bad mood trus temen saya nanya “Kenapa Bang kok mukanya asem banget?” trus orang itu cerita kalo dia telah beberapa kali ditolak oleh beberapa perusahaan gara-gara di CV-nya bukan seorang engineer dan hari itu yang kesekian kalinya dia ditolak padahal dia bilang “Saya belum sempet diwawancara, eh… udah ditolak duluan” [begitu lah kira-kira].
Ketika saya mengambil mata kuliah Fisika dan Teknologi Polimer, suatu kali dosen mata kuliah tersebut, Dr. Suparno Satira, bercerita tentang Fisika dan dunia kerja. Dulu perusahaan minyak multi-nasional Schlumberger setiap tahun datang ke ITB bermaksud untuk merekrut tenaga kerja baru dengan syarat lulusan atau akan segera lulus dari jurusan Teknik, lalu suatu ketika ada mahasiswa Fisika yang iseng ikut mendaftar. Kemudian setelah mengikuti serangkaian test, mahasiswa Fisika tersebut menduduki urutan pertama diantara pelamar lainnya. Semenjak itu mereka tidak lagi strick hanya menerima lulusan Teknik tapi juga lulusan Fisika, dalam hal ini mungkin Fisika Bumi yang sekarang berganti nama menjadi Fisika sistem kompleks. Lebih lanjut bapak tersebut bilang kalau sebenarnya lulusan Fisika itu memiliki keunggulan di bidang pemodelan sistem dan penalarannya yang baik, tetapi kadang-kadang lulusan Fisika ini gak PeDe kalo dihadapkan pada dunia kerja. Mungkin saya pikir mahasiswa Fisika ini ibarat anak SMA yang “jauh tidak lebih siap” bekerja dibandingkan anak STM, mereka harus di training lebih lanjut agar siap bekerja dan saya yakin setelah mereka di training mereka mampu bekerja lebih baik dan pada dasarnya kemampuan mereka yang mumpuni itu.

“Saya ingat ketika membaca salah satu buku Richard Philip Feynman, salah seorang nobelis Fisika asal Amerika Serikat. Dia bilang, sebelum perang dunia kedua sedikit sekali perusahaan yang memerlukan jasa Fisikawan tetapi setelah perang dunia kedua usai banyak sekali perusahaan yang memerlukan jasa seorang Fisikawan”

Ada anekdot [entah apakah ini anekdot atau ada faktanya yang kemudian jadi anekdot] tentang Fisikawan dan engineer ketika diwawancara suatu perusahaan. Pewawancara tersebut bertanya pada seorang engineer diakhir sesi tanya jawab “Anda mau gaji berapa kalo anda diterima di perusahaan ini?” kemudian seorang engineer menjawab dengan yakinnya “se-anu pak!”. Berikutnya seorang Fisikawan dipanggil dan diakhir sesi tanya jawab ditanya hal yang serupa, kemudian seorang Fisikawan menjawab dengan ragu-ragu “mmm…terserah perusahaan aja deh pak”.
Jawaban yang saya berikan ke anak SMA itu….
“Pada dasarnya lulusan Fisika itu bisa kerja di bidang apapun…”
*ditulis oleh seorang pengangguran Fisika

Quantum Dot: Towards Nanoscale Physics

The progression of today’s technology allows us to fabricate the system in which all degrees of freedom of electron are well-quantized so-called quantum dot. Quantum dot, in simple meaning, is three-dimensional quantum box that are capable of confining the small number of electron in three dimensional of spaces. Indeed, the size of the dot must be comparable to the wavelength of electron in order to confine electron. According to deBroglie relation one can estimate how small the dot is (suppose that the velocity of electron is comparable to its thermal velocity).

Quantum Dot has been attracting an increasing interest in a few past decades due to its remarkable physical properties and revealed many peculiar phenomena such as Coulomb Blockade Effect, Discrete Energy Spectrum, etc. It shows that quantum mechanical effect was proposed by Heisenberg, Schroedinger, and Dirac in 1930s becomes dominant in determining its properties- electrical, optical, etc- rather than classical picture, even in certain cases one can still use classical model to explain such the presence of diamond-shape by Constant Interaction Model or CI Model.

In this page, I’ll try to figure out the transport properties in quantum dot which is suppressed by Coulomb Blockade Effect by CI Model.

[to be continued- tiba2 aja mood gw jadi jelek uyyy...]

Summer In Osaka

During this summer, I am going to join summer school program for electronic devices at Osaka University for a month, the school will be started on July 7 2008. The committee will cover full travel and accommodation fees and expenses during the stay. During the school we will make a project namely simulation technology for electronic devices innovation under supervision of Prof. Nobuya Mori and also they will give serial lecture related with our research topic as well as introduction to Japanese culture.

According to my future academic advisor, Prof. Yoshiro Hirayama, Osaka university group has an excellent activities in the field of semiconductor and electronic devices simulation. And I hope the things I learn there will be helpful for my future study.

In summer, Osaka will be in high humidity.

Physics From The View Point Of Its Important In Science And Technology*

Physics is the fundamental science and the important key to understand the universe as well as nature phenomena. The fact that the progression of understanding physics behind the nature phenomena such as the motion of electron, waves, and other things significantly improve the quality of our everyday lives and directly help the mankind to build their modern civilization. Physics has opened the way up for other areas of science such as chemistry, biology, and medicine to extend their research. For instance, quantum mechanics formulation was proposed by Schrödinger, Dirac, and Heisenberg is widely used in chemistry to predict the properties of molecule such as molecule configuration, binding energy, etc. Also, the discovery of fiber optics and Magnetic Resonant Imaging has made a great impact to the medicine. The discoveries help the medic to find the finest way to cure the disease as well as surgery.

The most characteristic of science is its application, the fact that as a consequence of science one has a power to do things. The whole industrial revolution would almost have been impossible without the development of science. And physics has made a great contribution to the human technology as well as the industrial revolution. In other hand, our today’s technology is nothing without physics.

For instance, one of the physics branch i.e. condensed matter physics which is I am interested in, is the source of such technological innovations. Condensed matter physics has the greatest impact on our daily lives through the technological developments to which it gives rise. Such familiar devices as transistor, which has led to the miniaturization of a variety of electronic appliances; the semiconductor chip, which has made possible all the myriad aspects of the computer; magnetic tapes used in recording of all kinds; plastics for everything from kitchen utensils to automobile bodies; catalytic converters to reduce automobile emissions; composite materials used in fan jets and modern tennis or badminton rackets; and NMR tomography are a few practical consequences of research in condensed matter physics, and in physics generally.

These examples illustrate the intimate connection between fundamental science, physics, and the development of basic new technology for human prosperity. Indeed, the full extent to which the consequences of research in physics play a role in the quality of our everyday lives.

The fact that physics provides such an enormous number of degrees of freedom that the intellectual challenges that it presents are found. A high degree of creativity is required to find conceptually, mathematically, and experimentally tractable ways of extracting the essential things/features. Physics is intellectually stimulating also because of the discoveries of fundamentally new phenomena, the development of new concepts, and the opening up of new subfields which can be correlated with other areas of science such as chemistry, biology, and even social science.

* This article based on IGPAS exam under certain alteration.

Once Upon A Time

During summer 2007, I went to Italy for attending “Conference on Quantum Phenomena In Confined Dimension” held by International Centre For Theoritical Physics (ICTP) for two weeks. ICTP is one of the world’s foremost centres for scientific training and research. It is especially noted for helping scientist from the developing world. Several well-known scientists such as Prof. S. Tarucha from Tokyo University, Prof. Philip Kim from Columbia University came as invited speaker. Prof. Tarucha, for instant, gave a lecture about his recent research namely Kondo Effect In Quantum Dot while Prof. Philip Kim presented his current research about Electric Transport In Graphitic Carbon Material. The number of participant totally was 89 persons, including 4 persons as the steering committees. The participant mainly come from European and Asian country. Actually, it was the first time I went abroad and it was my pleasure to attend such scientific occasion altough as listener participant and I had to confess that I didn’t understand very well what the speaker talked about. Dr. John Peter and Dr. Vincent said to me, when we walked to the main building together, that I was too “young” to attend this conference since it was arranged for post-graduate student and experienced-scientist. However, it is good for me to know and interact with scientific community earlier since undergraduate level.

During the stay I met two Indonesian persons there (Gee…I was very happy since I could speak Indonesian with them), Mas Ryan (graduate student of Trieste University) and Ibu Pudji (the visiting researcher at the centre). They gave me a lot of advice concerning with my future study and they were pleased I came to the centre earlier. I still remember when we were taking dinner at Adriatico Guest House and talking much about Indonesia and physics lecturer at ITB, we talked much about Dr. Erwin Sucipto at that time and suddenly, the chinese person came to us and asked Ibu Pudji “what are you talking about” and she answered “We are talking with Indonesian languange” [we were laugh at that moment afterward].

I went to the downtown of Trieste almost everyday in the afternoon (indeed after the program was over), what a beautiful scienery and sculpture!

After “farewell party”, I and Gugu, my pal from Lisbon, went to unveiled city venice (see: Journey to Unveiled City Venice). It took two hours from Trieste Centrale to Venice by train. And a day before going to venice, I went to visit Grotta Gigante which is the giant Glatsier on earth [it was awesome].