Nano Science? Maybe it should be “No-donno” Science

This trimester I’m taking the subject Nano Science which was supposed to be taken by my batch in the third trimester. This is one of those case of “gatal mengada-ngada”. Or not. You see, I phailed a few of my subjects for the last trimester. And to make things worse, I even phailed the supplementary examinations. Well, it was hell for me. Here in MMU and back home where constant reminders are sent flying just when you least expected. Sometimes, I felt like my ears are bleeding from all the sharpness of words that were directed at me. Hey, not that I’m proud that I phailed, but according to a great friend of mine, “yea theres nothing to hide wert” (that is the exact line from what he said…Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V from message history). First time ever phailed in MMU life and it struck me with more than one subject. Haha.

Now, back to the originally planned story. So, the lecturer for the subject is the “oh-that-so-easy-I-can-do-with-my-eyes-closed” lecturer, Prof. Lim Swee Cheng. One thing about this guy, he is good. No, is great is more like it actually. He’s so good, he made the goodness of Dr. Chong Fook Seng from Alpha Year seems like second rate. Though he does usually made mistakes when writing on the whiteboard. But, given the age he is now and the white hair and the wrinkles and the thickness of his spectacles and the funny voice and the funny blank stare at you when you ask some things and the constant disregard for formal attire (wau, that’s a lot of “ands”…though the formal attire thing is so not the issue LOL), he is really that good.

Today, he almost finished chapter one of the subject. And what a pain today’s class was. Made me remember my calculus lecturer’s words, “one day, you will learn mathematics without numbers and you will ask “what is this?””. All the derivations, the differentiations, the conversions, the whatever-is-this-thing?-tions. Ah, ya. Forgot to tell you all. This subject, although named Nano Science, is more likely an advanced mathematics (for the first chapter, that is because Prof. Lim has yet to upload the notes for other chapters). Although there is the oh-so-familiar Schrödinger Equation from Solid State Electronics that made its return (yay?). And during the tutorial session (which was conducted right after class today making it two straight hours of brain-burning activity), he made fun of us when we did not know how to solve the questions. To quote him today during tutorial:

“This question is straight forward, very easy,”

“You should know all these things already,

“The Hamiltonian Operator and the Eigen Value should be at your fingertips already,”

“Schrödinger Equation is very important in this subject,”

And the kicker,

“What is so hard? You tell me which part of mathematics is hard,” while pointing at all the derivations he wrote on the whiteboard which contains only “A”, “B”, “Chi”, “Psi”, “X”, “Epsilon”, and all those symbols with only one number that is “2” because one of the formula have “2m*” in it.

Ah, another one missing, and not a good news for us either:

“If this tutorial you cannot do, then the test will be so much harder. Then how do you do it then?”



…………………………………………………………………WTF?!



Haiyo, if he is telling the truth (which is always the case because he is the kind of guy we can call “bendul” trans: straight forward…?), then I’m screwed [with skru driver mata Philip]. Study, study, next week got “quiz-that-can-happen-at-any-time-and-can-open-book-but-the-questions-will-be-harder” quiz. LOL.