We have here a glimpse into the future of Linus. For the first time in his life he is balding.



However, while this is common for lots of babies, Kerri’s father, as well as my own, suffer from alopecia, or significant baldness. As it normally comes down from the mother’s side, and as I only have a sister, it is a reasonable bet that I will be the last male of the “Pierce” clan with a full head of hair. It also means that perhaps at some time in the future Linus may take some small comfort in knowing that he has already experienced baldness once.

A large part of the last several weeks has been spent ordering equipment (and making sure it’s the right thing before ordering!). I have become very familiar with our purchase request form, as well as our support staff responsible for placing the orders. I am not above bribing her with espresso so that not all of our interaction is based around me making more work for her.

This period of time involves lots of planning, both short and long term.

For instance, I’m going to build an x-ray hutch. And this isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile style table top x-ray enclosure/hutch. No, no... this is a full sized, walk-in, large hutch capable of housing a large diffractometer. So, how big do you make the hutch? Well, funds are finite, so “as big as I want” isn’t an answer. But, making it big enough to eventually house 2 different sources and hutches is reasonable. Especially as building a large single hutch is much less than building a second hutch later on.

But it’s not just finances and logistics either. There are two different basic philosophies here. One, push everything as close together as possible and use no focusing. You’ll use a flat mono-chromator, minimize the total flight path, make alignment simpler, and have less attenuation from air-scattering of the x-rays. There are down sides too though. Frequently in this scheme your sample will only select a portion of the x-ray beam instead of the entire thing. The other philosophy is to move things out a bit, use a curved mono-chromator, and have the beam focused to a small size at the sample. This can increase the number of x-rays (assuming you’ve taken care of that nasty air-scattering) on the sample, lower backgrounds, and allow for more powerful selection of smaller regions of your sample. The price here is increased complication in set up and, often, requires more frequent “fine tuning.” So, that simple decision can mean a couple of extra meters of distance (or the other complication of having the source outside the hutch). Nothing is simple!

In my case I’ve opted to “supersize” the hutch, but to go with the shorter instrument geometry.

That also effects other things. Do I need 1 optical table or 2? Can I get a spare vacuum pump easily? Do I design the flight path to be evacuated (or filled with helium)? So many things to decide... and it needs to be in my head before placing the orders!

The 2nd worst thing to a completely empty lab, is a half filled lab where the budget has absolutely run out. So in the back of my head is always the idea that I need to make sure we get this instrument completely working before I spend too much money on other equipment and projects.

One very fun aspect of this is that I get to do much of the reading and work for this at home at night. As such Linus gets to help.

In one of the most bizarre set of circumstances, a major portion of my x-ray equipment arrived today. It was driven up from NJ, in a stretched limo. My equipment has now spent more time in a limo than I have.



They own a limo, for deliveries and service calls. This is awesomeness that is beyond compare.

Step one, get space, support, and funding.

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I’ve decided to add a little section to the reciprocal space blog to match a large project that is going on right now. Namely I am at the very first part of my “start-up” phase at RIT and am building my own X-ray Diffraction Lab. This is important for a large host of reasons, but is also a great deal of fun.

I suppose the first part of making an XRD lab is first to find a place that wants you to make one! Just getting to this point was no small feat and required a great deal of work. I’m recalling the phrase attributed to Archimedes, “give me a place to stand, a lever long enough, and I will move the world.” There’s a clever twist to be made from that but, to be honest, I’m too tired to put it together fully. Regardless, just getting to the point where you have this is a big step :






and



What you see there is my lab. Or what will be! There’s still a bit of cleaning to do, but it’s a generous space. You can date the lab by some of the hardware and equipment that’s visible. The line of boxes is a collection of things that we’ll be sending off for surplus after it is looked through by the appropriate people. Actually as I write this there are a few things already going in, but I’m behind at updating the blog.

Much of my own equipment is already on order, but has yet to arrive.

It’s easy to think of “research” related items. All the important things to making an x-ray source are pretty familiar to me by this point. But the new thing is thinking of all the things (tools, parts, infrastructure) that were already in place when I joined my thesis adviser, then later when I joined Argonne. It’s simple things that I forgot about initially. “Oh yes, I need to get some desks and chairs in here.”

It’s also been interested to see the equipment that are being donated both from individual faculty members, outside colleagues and friends, but also at a department level. I’ve been reticent to accept much in the way of old electronics, but other things are much safer. However I suspect it’s only a matter of time before I break down and take someone’s old NIM bin (please help commit me if I actually take a CAMAC/VME crate). All the time in the back of my head is the knowledge that my start up funding (while very nice) is finite. So especially until I have a major working instrument (x-ray source, diffractometer, and working electronics to control it/take data), I will be quite miserly.

There is also a danger in the above pictures. It is absolutely necessary for the lab to pass through an “empty” phase. But that empty phase cannot last long at all. It is imperative that I get the instrument working as quickly as possible, while at the same time maintaining my active research efforts and channels. And begin getting ready to teach soon! And learn to be a father! So much fun! But yes, I must get things going quickly. An empty lab for a significant period of time becomes a very, very bad thing.

Today’s musical selection :



My single favorite Coltrane album.

I ran across a wonderful x-ray diffraction resource on the web at the site Powder Diffraction on the Web. It’s material from a course at the University of London. It seems like a very good resource for some quick information (especially when the books are not near by).

Magnetics, now with more theory!

Don’t try to read the actual text from the graphic, it’s included below. This picture is mostly for my own vanity.)



I typed up my first advertisement to attract a student last week. The idea is to do some numerical work that would model some interesting behavior in magnetic thin films. In particular there has recently been a paper by some of my colleagues that shows some unusual reversal trajectories. I had actually noticed a similar oddity in some simulations I had been running a few years ago. Not being a real theorist, and being very occupied with other things, I stuck it on the shelf as “curious but probably broken.” Now it would seem that this could actually describe something real. Fun stuff.

It’s fun in another couple of ways. First, I’ve been a closet numerical physicist for a long time. I started writing programs that would reproduce work done by other people as far back as my time in graduate school. Some of it even made it into a paper tangentially. But I’ve never really published a good, solid numerics only paper. It would be very satisfying to write something up if this manages to work.

But it’s also fun in that this could potentially be my first publication that is both separate from Argonne and from the U. of Washington. In a phone conversation over the summer one of my professor’s from UW asked, “What will be your first paper as a new faculty member? No, no... YOUR first paper.” His point being that I need to be working from day 1 on things that can start here at RIT and get going quickly, enabling me to make the transition without lag time in publications/results.

I suppose another fun aspect of this is that it will involve running multiple instances of the simulation codes on the RIT Research Computing cluster.

And just in case you want the real .PDF, here it is.

Numerical_Physics_Fall_11