Kamis, 23 Januari 2014

"terkadang selesai lebih baik dari pada sempurna"  (catatan= saat deadline tiba.....)


Student Council

Hello. My name is Febby P I , and I am the candidate for the Student Council Representative. Last year members of the Student Council did a great job by adjusting the academic schedule to our needs, organizing the clubs of national minority students and improving the living conditions in the hostel. However, I think that the Council needs some refreshment - new representatives are to come in and reinforce the experience of the old ones by their enthusiasm. In my opinion, this new approach can be demonstrated by first-year students.

I was authorized by the freshmen of our university to run for the student council representative. I guess they chose me because I was previously involved in high school council and afterwards spent one year participating in the Freedom Support Act project for future leaders. One of my achievements was the ban of the compensation system on PT lessons, so that our students didn't have to make up for the lessons when they were ill or absent.

To tell the truth, this "political" and leadership experience only stirred up my thirst for making the world a better place by showing the ways to do it. For example, our university is a wonderful place to study at, but still it needs some improvement: those who ride to the university by bicycle or on roller-skate would benefit, if the car movement were restricted on the campus territory. Those who live in the hostel would find their life easier, had there been a special bus connecting the hostel and the campus, so that they won't have to travel by two means of transport twice a day. The senior students would have more time for finding a proper job, had their academic periods been scheduled for two days instead of five. To put it in a nutshell, there is a thousand other trifles that would make our university a sophisticated and comfortable place to study in.

The slogan for my election campaign is "FRESHMAN FOR REFRESHMENT", and as a representative of first-year students I come out for bringing new energy and new enthusiasm to the student council. I am not going to convince you that I am the very best candidate for this position. I am only 16; I have quite a modest track record in the school council and participating in the cultural exchange programme for future leaders. I lack experience, but it is compensated by zeal, an unprejudiced new approach to old things. Furthermore, I am ready to work with gusto for your benefit. But I am not ambitious, and do not strive for authority for the sake of authority. If you elect another candidate, I will sincerely wish him all of successes in improvement of our students' life for the better - and continue my own struggle. But if you empower me with your confidence, I will do everything but the impossible to represent your interests and achieve our common goals and ideals. I am sure that our aims coincide - we are all here to obtain education that will teach us how to make the world a slightly better place. If you empower me with your trust, we will start from solving local problems and making our university a little better place.

Thank you very much for your attention.
you know ? ...
"all the world is a stage"

By learning to obey we know to command


Natural Phenomenon



Fire Rainbow

The sky is the nature's canvas on which she paints beautiful and ever changing pictures. Light itself is her color and she uses it in various ways to create beautiful optical phenomena. One such rare masterpiece of her creation is the fire rainbow.

If you see a splash of rainbow colors in the sky, with the whole thing looking like a multicolored flame, then you have probably witnessed a fire rainbow. It is a rainbow type phenomenon, in the sense that it has the colors of a rainbow but it is shaped quite differently. It looks like a rainbow colored flame and hence the name 'fire rainbow'. When people see a picture of such a rainbow, some think that it's a hoax and is a computer generated picture! Nothing could be far from the truth. Let such people know that it is not an illusion created by photoshop, but an actual documented meteorological event. The facts that I talk about here will illuminate the actual nature of this optical phenomenon.

Its sighting, unlike a rainbow, is not so common. It is supposed to be a very rare phenomenon that a person could see once or twice in his lifetime. That too, if he has his eyes trained at the sky to appreciate the art pieces put up there, by nature. If you are on a photography hunt to capture that rare sighting of a fire rainbow, then you need to know when and how it occurs. It is just like the hunter who must know when and where to look for his prey, the photographer must know when and in what conditions can this phenomenon occur. During such sightings, photography skills are actually tested.

What is a Fire Rainbow?

In the language of the meteorologists and physicists, a fire rainbow is known as a circumhorizontal arc, circumhorizon arc, lower symmetric 46 degree plate arc or just CHM for short. In scientific language, it is classified as an 'Ice Halo'. It is generated by refraction (slowing down of light) in ice crystals placed in a typical type of clouds called 'Cirrus Clouds'.

Its full halo is an extensive multicolored range of colors, seen parallel to the horizon in presence of cirrus clouds. The center of this halo is always observed to be below the Sun. It is observed that red is always the first in the band of colors. If the conditions are not ideal, only fragments of the arc are seen.


How is it Formed?

Through years of observation and study, meteorologists have discovered the exact conditions that give rise to a CHM. For it to form, the Sun is always high up in the sky; often observed to be at a elevation angle of 58 degrees or slight more. Also required are cirrus clouds which have a large number of plate shaped ice crystals. It is important that you are at the right location to be able to see the it, as the position of the Sun relative to you and its altitude decides it. It is a known fact, that fire rainbows are not visible at positions north of 55 degree North latitude or South of 55 degree south latitude. Sightings are more probable around the summer solstice. Elaborate timetables of where these phenomena are likely to occur and be seen, have been made available online.

If you go down to the physics of how this type of optical halo occurs, then you must understand it in terms of refraction of light through ice crystals of specific types. An optical halo occurs when a sun ray enters a horizontally oriented ice crystals of flat hexagon shape, from a vertical face on the side and exits through the near horizontal face at the bottom. This refraction event creates an angle of 90 degrees between entering ray and exiting ray which produced a band of dispersed colors that are well separated and visible clearly. A collection of such typical sized and shaped crystals, oriented at specific angles with respect to the Sun and at the right elevation create a fire rainbow! Knowing how such a beautiful sight is created, doesn't undermine its beauty but only adds to a deeper appreciation of it.