Why Hot and Why Cold?

Hari selasa kemaren pertama kalinya gw cengo' di kelas merhatiin lecturer ngedongengin rumus-rumus ribet dan gambar-gambar aneh, yang katanya sih tentang "Drude's model" alias "classical theory of metal". Gambar titik-titik kecil seliweran, huruf A sampe Z yang dirangkai sama kotak segitiga silang bulet (kayak maen PS aje, haha...) dan sebagainya khas anak material. Wow ndasku iso jebol iki...

Tapi alhamdulillah, setelah 2 jam berlalu, gw baru nyadar kalo nih pelajaran ternyata asik banget! Ribet tapi bener-bener menstimulan otak buat berpikir keras dan lojik.

Dan tiba-tiba gw teringat kata-kata kata-kata temen gw semester kemaren, adhi, yang bilang,"Wah prof. Wan Jun Ling itu ngajarnya enak banget ko!". Ck, kecewa gw. Salah besar tuh orang. Harusnya dia bilang,"DAHSYAT BANGET!!!!" Gak rugi lah kalo gw mesti naroh dia sebagai lecturer ke 2 terbaik di MSE (Materials Science and Engineering) setelah prof Wong Chee Cheong.

Anyway kemaren juga beliau ngejelasin tentang sebuah fenomena menarik. Dia nanya,"Why we can exhibit the feeling of hot or cold." Mm, menarik. Ada yang mau mencoba menjawab? Kira-kira dia ngejawabnya gini kemaren:

Just imagine we have two systems. System 1 is so called the stimulator, system 2 is our skin. Everything in the world, including those 2 systems, are built or arranged by sequence of atoms. The question is, how they behave in response to heat treatment (temperature changing)?

Now let's see what gonna be happened at low temperature. The atoms will start to vibrate although with only low amplitude. And realize that, increasing the temperature will lead those atoms to vibrate more and more, thus generate them to produce higher amplitude than before.

Back to the 2 systems. Let's say we are now standing in the hot place. From the theory we went through above, we can start to deduce that system 1 which is the surrounding vibrates with higher amplitude than system 2 which is our skin. Isn't that correct?

What happened next? Realize that vibration by atoms produce mechanical energy. Higher amplitude implies with higher mechanical energy. Then with the concept of sunnatullah that, nature will always try to minimize its energy to stabilize the system, some amount of mechanical energy gained by system 1 will then tansfer to system 2. The energy transfers is widely known as "heat". And that's why we can taste the feeling of hot... Then why cold? Just use similar approach vice versa.

Yah begitulah. Mayan top kan. Tahun lalu udah pernah dikasi basicnya sih tentang ginian, cuman nggak begitu detail. terkadang kita diajarkan untuk nrimo, tanpa berpikir kritis kenapa ini terjadi. Kalah deh sama budak-budak kecil (bahasa malay-nya anak kecil).

Cuman setidaknya sekarang gw udah bisa jawab pertanyaan dari beberapa temen,"Belajar apaan lo no di sono." :)

9 January 2008
On the verge of 1427 H
Menantikan saat-saat indah bersama prof Wan Jun Ling 4 bulan ke depan...