RE: AMMRL: Murphy does NMR?

From: alan kook <drkook_at_austin.rr.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 04:35:23 -0500

Murphy is my friend!!

But I like Maxwellian demons better, because I hate to blame the dead for
(sur)-real events that only the living can cause.

I didn't believe in quantum mechanical "tunneling" until I ran a series of
DNP (hyperpolarized) experiments using C13-labelled citrate samples. T1 of
the unlabelled carbons done the chain from the carbonyl label went from 0.7
seconds to 5-30 seconds (reproducibly).

Amazing what a 90 GHz microwave, 3.5 Tesla Magnet and 4.0 Kevin in
combination with a stable radical can do to the "Laws" of Physics.

Alan
Molecular Biotools LTD
Oxford Instruments USA

-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Soper [mailto:a.soper_at_ru.ac.za]
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 3:06 AM
To: ammrl_at_ammrl.org
Subject: AMMRL: Murphy does NMR?

Dear All,

The other day, while developing a pulse program I had a
problem, solved it (after some head scratching), and then
began to wonder if Murphy also does NMR.

I set a homospoil gradient pulse to clean up unwanted
transverse magnetization, and it re-focused magnetization
previously dephased by an excitation-sculpting selective
combo!

Just as programmers may blame 'bugs' for their software
errors, so others blame Murphy for their design lapses.
Blaming Murphy may just be more reasonable :-) (see below)

For those not familiar with Murphy, he is supposed to be
responsible for various sets of "Laws" which may be
summarized in one over-arching Law.

"If anything can happen, it will, and at the most inconvenient
time and in the most system compromising manner"

>From this follows (by Murphy) that if toast falls from a table it
lands butter-side down. Interestingly Mad Labs (National
Geographic Channel from the UK) recently did some statistical
research using quite a large number of slices of toast, and
found this law to be substantially valid. Most of the toast (over
80 %) flipped while falling. They doubled the height of a
standard table, repeated their experiment, and the majority
(over 80 %) of the toast-slices landed butter-side up.

One of his Electrical Engineering classics is that:

You add a fuse to protect a circuit. The circuit then blows and
protects the fuse.

Ignore Murphy at your peril!

Sincerely,
Andy Soper
Rhodes University
NMR Facility
South Africa.

||---------------------------------------------
Sed ex amante alio accenditur alius. St Augustine.
One loving spirit sets another on fire.

Andy Soper (*NEW* Contact Details) Email: a.soper_at_ru.ac.za
Telephone: National +27: Area (0)46
Office: 603 8717: Fax: 622 5109: Home 622 6315
Mobile: (0)82 56 27037 Amateur Radio: ZS2 VJZ
Received on Fri Apr 04 2008 - 01:32:26 MST

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