This report covers a variety of topics and pictures, such as,
his research, the Institute, lifestyle in Poland, and more!
Enjoy his final report!
I have been at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kraków, Poland for the collaboration for two months since February 24, 2008. This visit is supported by the JSPS International Training Program (ITP). This is my second (and final) report of the stay in Kraków.
As I described in the first report, we discussed the calorimetric results of chiral liquid-crystalline material 5*CB obtained at Osaka and prepared a paper for the first month. This article has already been accepted and will be published in J. Chem. Thermodynamics sometime in this summer. In the second month, we prepared another paper on the low-temperature heat capacity of 5*CB and its analogous compound 8*OCB. In this study we found excess heat capacities below 1 K for some crystalline phases as well as for the glasses of liquids. The manuscript has been submitted to a journal. We also prepared a summary paper on the physical properties of 5*CB. This paper mainly concerns the evidence of disorder in crystalline phases of 5*CB. We will submit it soon. We also discussed the results of quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) experiments of 5*CB and 8*OCB obtained at Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA). This is a study on the molecular motions of 5*CB and 8*OCB in the fluid phases. The discussion with Dr. Krawczyk, who is a specialist of neutron scattering techniques, was productive and I got a better understanding of QENS. Although the spectra obtained appeared to be more complicated than we expected, the type of molecular motions has almost been identified. Some more detailed analyses should be done. In addition to the analytical works of the previous experiments described above, we also started new collaborations. One is the calorimetric study of a material which has multi-plastic crystalline phases. We have found several interesting features such as multi-glass transitions. This collaboration will continue further. Another new collaboration is the QENS experiment of 6O2OCB which is an analogous compound of 8*OCB. We have a beamtime at JAEA this year.
It was fortunate that I had a chance to present my research activity at the seminar of the Department on 15th April. The title of my talk was “Orientational ordering and rotational tunneling of partially deuterated methyl groups in solids”. Since the seminar was open to the researchers in other groups in the Institute as well as to the scientists in Jagiellonian University, it was a pleasure to see and discuss with many scientists from various fields during and after the seminar. It was especially nice to meet Dr. Olejniczak and Prof. Lalowicz, who also study the rotational tunneling by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques. Unfortunately we only had a few hours for the discussion. However, I learned some important concepts on the rotational tunneling from them.
Since the majority of Polish people are Christians, mostly Catholics, Easter Day is incredibly important for them. They have three days off for Easter. Actually most of the staffs and students disappeared from the Institute during Easter time. Prof. Wasiutyński and Dr. Krawczyk kindly invited me to their houses on Easter and I enjoyed it very much. I am grateful for their kind invitation. Here I introduce some customs on Easter that I saw in Poland. The custom on Easter in Poland has not changed much for centuries and there remain various kinds of celebrations with traditional style. About a week before Easter, I saw a number of street stores at the market square in Kraków selling small branches of pussy willow with decorations and flowers in braid called “palm”. The Sunday before Easter is called “Palm Sunday” and people take palms to a church to be blessed. It was nice to see many people walking in the town with palms in their hands. A day before Easter, people put several specific items such as colored eggs, bread or horseradish into a small basket and take them to a church to be blessed. Every item has some symbolic meaning related to Christ. On Easter Day all the members of the family get together to spend the time talking and having delicious cuisines that they prepared beforehand. All the Polish students I met in Kraków went back to their home town to see their families. The next day after Easter Day is also a national holiday in Poland. This is one of the different customs on Easter from other European countries. On this day children play dashing water on people, even on tourists. Fortunately I did not encounter such disaster. However some people say that being splashed with water on Easter Monday will bring you good luck. Should I have done it?
During the stay in Poland, especially for the first few weeks, large parts of the conversations were about cultures, customs or languages except for the scientific topics. Since there remain many traditional customs in Poland such as that of Easter described above, comparing the customs between two countries was interesting. However, while doing that, I found myself behaving as a judge of the customs in two countries. Actually it is expressed in the term of “generally” appearing several times in my first ITP report. In order to understand the new situation, I was trying to compare the customs of two countries and make a dichotomy between them in general form. However, during the stay of two month, I noticed that it never succeeds. As I got to know more about the people, the picture of “general Polish people” in my mind faded out. The categorization of the people or customs does not give their thorough understanding. Although it took two months, it was lucky for me to notice this simple fact. This may be because the people in the Institute treated me not as a representative of the Japanese people but as an individual person of specific character. I am grateful to them very much.
My stay for two months in Poland was tremendously valuable. Our scientific collaboration has considerably progressed through this stay and, at the same time, I have broadened my horizons. I would like to express my gratitude to JSPS International Training Program for the financial support for this stay. I also would like to acknowledge Prof. Wasiutyński and the Institute of Nuclear Physics for taking me into the Institute as well as the support for the lodging during the stay. I am grateful to Prof. Massalska-Arodź, Dr. Krawczyk, Dr. Zieliński and Ewa Juszyńska for the scientific collaboration and the valuable discussions. I hope the collaboration will continue for years to come. I would like to acknowledge all the members of the Institute for the great hospitality they provided during my stay. Special thanks to Ewa, Gosia, Mirek, Magda, Darek, Piotrek and Zosia for their friendship.