Dear Readers (Volume 3 Edition 2)

A nice comment and a query from Boris Mizaikoff from Vienna.

I think that IJVS is already pointing towards the future of scientific publications and is a great idea! Just one question – will you be able to cite the articles in IJVS and find them e.g. in Current Contents?

Thanks Boris. Your comment about Citation Index and Current Contents etc – see my last Edition [volume 3 edition 1] We are really working on this one, but we need people to cite the journal.

An email from Dr Ingrin in Toulouse.

I agree with you, the most useful to a reader would be J.R. Bloggs, Internet. J. Vib. Spect.,[www.ijvs. com] Vol. Ed. Pg.,. Unfortunately ,I have difficulty to locate precisely the first and last pages of the articles in your last edition. How should we do?

Thanks for your email. We have tried several numbering systems with an edition of IJVS. We tried putting many numbers at random so that whatever default printer condition a reader shose to download hard copy, hey would have at least one number per A4 page. I asked readers for their comments, but none were received! We than changed to the current system, each article carries a number so there is no end page number. we again asked for comments and hurrah (!) you have emailed – thank you very much. Would you prefer the earlier system?

I don’t want to be pedantic but strictly a Web Journal HAS no pages. Each section is a continuous run of text and the length is meaningless for reference purposes. We could indicate the number of each line, but the numbers would be very large. What do you think?

Dr. Ray Frost emailed from Brisbane.

I was wondering if I might have an “email” conversation with you about a subject which I find extremely difficult to understand.

I read with great interest your most recent article in IJVS on polarisation studies. What happens if I am studying minerals and I have the Transverse optic and the longitudinal optic. When do I get these?

Now here in Brisbane we do all 180 optics both with the Renishaw and the PE FT Ramans. So with the laser light polarised (633 nm HeNe) and 180 degree collection, I should only see the longitudinal optic ( am I right in this) But if we were to collect with 90 optics then if the laser light is polarised in the right plane then we should see both LO and TO. However if the plane of the laser light is at right angles to the above then we would see neither LO and TO. Am I correct?

Please Pat for the sake of new, old PhD’s students write an article lucid and precise on this topic. I know SPS Porto wrote an article in The SPEX speaker Vol 13 n0 2 June 1968, pages 1 to 11. However this article is confusing does contain quite a number of errors which effect the logic and the paper is difficult to follow to say the least. Please help.

May I remind you of the after dinner speech you gave at the 2nd ACOVS confrence, I am still laughing

We asked Dr. Trevor Gilson from The University of Southampton to reply to Ray- Patrick has asked me to reply to your e-mail to him after reading his
article in ijvs. So far as another article is concerned, I don’t think I could make any improvement on what I wrote some years ago in Gilson & Hendra, ‘Laser Raman Spectroscopy’, Wiley, Chichester, UK, 1970, ISBN 0 471 30200 7.

To answer your immediate query: the great majority of minerals have centro-symmetric structures so that the rule of mutual exclusion applies; the modes you see in the Raman effect will not be dipole active and the transverse/longitudinal concept does not apply (the modes are transverse or longitudinal to the dipole, and dipole interactions are the source of the TO/LO splitting). There are a few notable exceptions, most obviously Zinc Blende, and that has been extensively dealt with in the literature.

It may be helpful to point out that in molecular crystals of
centro-symmetric structure, you may see molecular modes that APPEAR to be both Raman and infrared active, but that the activity resides in different components of a correlation multiplet in that case. The coincidence will not be exact.

The book referred to is out of print, but I hope you may be able to find a copy somewhere in Australia! I will talk to Patrick about the possibility of making parts of it more easily accessible. Another author you could search on is S.S.Mitra. You might also find Loudon helpful with regard to TO/LO: Advances in Physics, 13, 423 (1964) with errata in 14, 621.

The most important consideration in practical experiments on crystals is birefringence: no point setting the polarisation and the analyser in directions that the crystal is going to split.

Hope this is all helpful as preliminary information.

A really good idea from Kai Greibenow, the author of our first review – see volume 3 edition 1.

Wouldn’t it be fun ( and also a further difference to regular papers) to have discussions on papers with reader questions/comments and comments by the authors? One could attached the results of these discussion as an Appendix Discussion to the papers. Don’t know whether too much would be going on, but it would be interesting to test.

Another Wesleyan Gem!

Something of a literary nature for the next edition of IJVS – I found it in “INside Laboratory Management”, AOAC International, December 1998, p24-25. The author (and I use the term advisedly) is Jo Rita Jordan, a contributing writer no less. Obviously a writer rather than a spectroscopist. I quote the opening sentence of her literary triumph “Raman Spectrometers – A Field Guide of Instrumentation”

“Raman Spectroscopy is an ingenious way to gather infrared (IR) spectra with visible light”.

You gotta laugh, else you cry!

And finally, a contribution from a male reader! ha ha!