tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post3467887221685423218..comments2024-03-28T04:15:44.459-05:00Comments on nanoscale views: Magic hands, secret sauce, and tricks of the tradeDouglas Natelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13340091255404229559noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-46880562891078919232019-07-11T22:51:52.434-05:002019-07-11T22:51:52.434-05:00I think it is a non scientific topic. It actually ...I think it is a non scientific topic. It actually demonstrates that the "magician" does not understand the trick (if it can not be explained and thought to others). I remember Batlogg from the Schon case, saying how magical is their deposition machine...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-56853610033924190172019-07-05T01:04:20.655-05:002019-07-05T01:04:20.655-05:00There are people with natural talent for working w...There are people with natural talent for working with their hands, and others without. For those that can't naturally, they just need to a good coach and a lot of practice, just like any trade out there. Let's not be lazy and give up on good coaching and lots of practice. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-74082694151100629682019-07-04T23:29:48.515-05:002019-07-04T23:29:48.515-05:00Example: all nanoparticle synthesis.Example: all nanoparticle synthesis.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-7138007764862192772019-07-01T13:37:35.820-05:002019-07-01T13:37:35.820-05:00I've experienced this over and over. I and my ...I've experienced this over and over. I and my current Department head have magic fingers. The post doc I worked with in grad school (Y. T. Lee) does ... but none of the other grad students in our group did. My own grad students, and the ones I had as my T.A.s had various degrees of them. <br /><br />I've actually been able to analyze to some degree what enables magic fingers. First, one needs to have a feel for the various parameters, such as that "unusual distance", that matter. This comes from a wide knowledge of such things as ordinary mechanics, the laws of quantum mechanics, and a practical knowledge of electronics (such as I personally got from TV repair, Ham radio, and two years (at Rice) working as a technician on two mass specs using all vacuum tubes). <br /><br />Second, one has to have the ability to tie these to the "clues" one sees when tweeking knobs on an apparatus. One needs to see correlations between the knobs and the signals, in multiple dimensions, and tie them to the physics. One's brain has to be "attuned" to these things. This is in some ways equivalent to seeing new and different ways of doing math proofs.<br /><br />A good example is our own undergrad P. Chem lab in which we have a homemade ICR mass spec and a very old standard LEED/Auger apparatus. These have lots of knobs. The students eventually get the hang of the LEED, all of them. The T.A.s easily learn it. But the Auger is different. I've tried to explain to numerous T.A.s over the years how to set it up from scratch, explaining how everything ties together, and illustrating them. But the analog lock-in we use is just too complicated! They understand the principle, but how to set it up so that the (very weak!) signal makes it through the whole thing without clipping in the intermediate stages seems to elude them. It's just too much to expect them to learn how to understand practical electronics! I suspect that digitizing the signal and references with a really good pro-grade 24 bit audio system and computer processing would fix this, but somebody who understands would have to write the computer program. <br /><br />The home-made ICR is complicated, but eventually we generated a cook-book procedure that works, though it took lots of feedback from students. They have to be able to recognize the non-linear effects of space charge and how to get use it to get big signals. dtvmcdonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07594633209626059331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-32048292680145436112019-06-29T22:05:22.703-05:002019-06-29T22:05:22.703-05:00@Douglas Natelson
I wouldn't say it's tou...@Douglas Natelson<br /><br />I wouldn't say it's tough, I think it's more that the teaching it is tedious, with little payout at the end. Really it comes down to the fact that you really get nothing at the end except more skilled competitors (and have done some good for humanity...).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-55259263061176531082019-06-29T06:41:21.648-05:002019-06-29T06:41:21.648-05:00Anon@2:08, that’s the idea behind the Journal of V...Anon@2:08, that’s the idea behind the Journal of Visualized Experiments (https://www.jove.com/), but as you say, it’s very tough to capture skills rather than procedures.Douglas Natelsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13340091255404229559noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-57224964053757316282019-06-29T04:19:58.760-05:002019-06-29T04:19:58.760-05:00> but had this been a blog post with a comment ...> but had this been a blog post with a comment section, it could have been resolved much faster, potentially.<br />https://scipost.org/SciPostPhysAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-52445081731072761372019-06-29T02:08:51.268-05:002019-06-29T02:08:51.268-05:00I think it comes down to the fact that people don&...I think it comes down to the fact that people don't really respect experimental physics enough to treat these things as something that should be published thoroughly. <br /><br />Think about it, in principle one could write a publish a long document, with videos, photos, etc. to teach others how to do these processes. The reason we don't is that there simply isn't a motivation for doing it. It's a public good that everyone could use, but no one is willing to fund.<br /><br />In my own group we take rigorous notes and videos of complex procedures to teach new students and postdocs. Although we are open to each other internally, I don't see any practical motivation for publishing these methods publically, nor even a proper venue to do so. <br /><br />I think it's difficult to teach skills, whether that be cooking, flying aircrafts, etc. But as experimental scientists, we should be the best at figuring out how to teach experimental skills. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-9143955762923264352019-06-28T17:16:21.853-05:002019-06-28T17:16:21.853-05:00I had a colleague working fruitlessly for a year t...I had a colleague working fruitlessly for a year to reproduce a pulsed laser deposition recipe reported in the literature. Then, at a conference, she asked the original author for any tricks. He mentioned that they used a very non-standard distance, which wasn't reported in the paper. When my colleague copied this, she was able to reproduce their results. So much wasted effort! All to save a paragraph or two of details in an online medium where space is effectively infinite. I don't want to be one of those people says scientific publishing is broken, but had this been a blog post with a comment section, it could have been resolved much faster, potentially.Ted Sandershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15001183656827732917noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-54381611621967441152019-06-28T17:04:10.362-05:002019-06-28T17:04:10.362-05:00Stm tips: etching and imaging. success rates are a...Stm tips: etching and imaging. success rates are all over the place even for different folks in the same group using the same equipment.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com