EXO- or ENDO-? Spectroscopy won’t tell you. X-ray crystallography
will. In less than a day!
If you’ve heard that X-Ray crystallography is complicated, timeconsuming, and costly, forget it. Times have changed.
Modern-day X-ray crystallographic instruments from Nicolet use automatic, computerized procedures to eliminate all of the time-consuming, intricate steps previously encountered in structure determinations. You can get crystal-clear results in one day not three months. —
Why X-ray crystallography? Because it can provide data that no other technique can. It’s now an essential, routine tool for the well-rounded laboratory. And you’ll find crystallography cost effective. If your work involves inorganic, organic, or organometallic chemistry, natural products, catalysis, or materials analysis, you should investigate state-of-the-art X-ray crystallography. Get in touch.
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NICOLET XRD CORPORATION
10061 Bubb Road
Cupertino, California 95014, USA Telephone (408) 257-7100 Telex 346-303
CIRCLE 153 ON READER SERVICE CARD
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ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 53, NO. 14, DECEMBER 1981
sponded by establishing tenure quotas and adopting policies limiting the number of tenure track positions available. For example, one or two positions in a six-person chemistry department may be three-year terminal positions, without the possibility of tenure, regardless of the qualifications of the individuals who hold them. There are teachers who have become academic nomads, wandering from one temporary job to another, perpetual instructors or assistant professors, spending years at the bottom of the pay scale. While this situation seems to pose little threat to analytical chemists, whose services are in great demand, it is a very serious problem in many disciplines in the humanities.
Students The students themselves are at once asset and a liability. The fictional archetypal teacher, Mr. Chips, observed that the faculty and administration of a school get older, but the students are always young. Youth is the characteristic of students that can make working with them so stimulating one minute and so infuriating the next. Students come out of high school at the age of 18 or 19, still in the emotional upheaval of their teens. Many of them were never challenged by their high school curriculum and are largely unprepared to deal with the pressures of a college education. Even though many are bright and eager, few have had to develop the discipline needed to sit and concentrate in order to really learn something. Few, as college freshmen, are able to carry an argument to its logical conclusion or express themselves clearly. The best of them try to be assertive and independent, but falter, unsure of their abilities. All of a sudden they must work with a professor, someone who has been portrayed in television and the movies either as a mixture of brilliance and preoccupation, or as a fool. Many actually resist being taught and fight every effort the teacher makes. It may take a half dozen approaches to a concept before such a student will take hold of it. Even a class of college seniors can be told how to prepare for an exam, and most will ignore the advice. These are all the ingredients of the challenge in teaching and are some of the things that make teaching so incredibly interesting. In fact, most of the important but intangible assets of college teaching involve the students. Watching students transform from somewhat disinterested spectators in a large general chemistry class to enthusiastic, aggressive class participants in their senior courses is a real source of satisfaction. Watching heads nod in agreement and faces light up as ideas are an
