Toby wrote,
>Armel you may indeed be more equal than some but, I would like to
>welcome you to visit us in the suburbs of Washington, along with some of
>your favorite samples. DC is no match for Paris or even Grenoble, and
>our cafeteria does not come near the quality of the ILL, but there are
>some other attractions.
There is some misconception here too. You suggest that my presence
at Washington together with my samples would be a plus. Thank you
a lot. However, you are THE neutron specialist. I see the neutron
diffractometers less than 3 days per year, so that my experience is
lost each time. Sending samples by mail would not change so
dramatically the result, reducing considerable the cost for the citizen
tax payers...
I already suggested to install such an "automatic" powder diffractometer
at ILL. As Alan wrote recently, this could be a question of manpower.
I think that this is rather a local political question : it is not a very
interesting job for a human being to be a simple sample loader...
This is related to a more general question about human relations between
those preparing new samples (frequently they are chemists) and those
having some power in characterizing them (frequently physicists).
In spite of working in a chemistry lab, I am not sure to be neither
a chemist or a physicist (I studied geology, geochemistry, mineralogy ;-).
Anyway, I see at least one time per week some physicists of the
neigbouring labs coming for trying "fishing" some new sample in
order to give some food to their NMR, Mossbauer, EPR (etc)
machines. They just need the sample, not the man having prepared it.
Hope that this subject of discussion will keep you awake till
Glasgow, Lubo.
Best
Armel Le Bail - Universite du Maine, Laboratoire des Fluorures,
CNRS ESA 6010, Av. O. Messiaen, 72085 Le Mans Cedex 9, France
http://www.cristal.org/
