The problem is that many of today's young faculty hires don't know
how to run their own spectra so they think their students didn't need
to know. When I think back to my grad student days over 40 years ago,
our supervisors were clueless about running spectra, but didn't
object to their better students trying to get permission to lay hands
on the nmr which was the most expensive machine in the department. In
1964 I blackmailed my way into hands on use of McGill's HR60 (and for
those of you old enough, I also used its predecessor an HR40 in
Cambridge). What happened was that the faculty member in charge
needed spectra for a conference & he was leaving for at noon -- the
machine was down and in those days Varian flew in service men from
California. I said I'd fix it if I could run it myself in the future.
He declined but as noon approached he had second thoughts -- I went
down with a scope and a bunch of other gear, did a bit of mumbo-jumbo
and slipped a replacement mercury reference battery into the recorder.
What short sighted faculty members don't realize is that their
students may be employed in small companies or Universities where
they may be the nmr expert and they may not be close to same day
service from anyone. For 38 years I taught an advanced
instrumentation course which dealt with the how and why of instrument
innards and turned my students loose on vendors with projects giving
them X hypothetical $s and a "What would you buy and why" question
-- write a report to senior management justifying your expenditure.
-- I had more positive feedback from that course than any other I
taught.
One of my last acts before retiring was to turn a grant for a 500
MHz machine into a 600 and a replacement for our 300.
--
Prof. Jack M. Miller,
Special Advisor on Buildings and Space,
Emeritus Professor of Chemistry,
Brock University,
St. Catharines, Ont.,
Canada, L2S 3A1.
Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3789
FAX (905) 684 2277
e-mail jmiller_at_brocku.ca
http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/~chemweb/faculty/miller/
Received on Mon Apr 10 2006 - 11:33:20 MST