Practicals, Labs, and Tutorials

Practicals, Labs, and Tutorials in Grenoble

All full-time participants carry out practicals¹ on two different neutron instruments at Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) and on 3 or 4 different synchrotron beamlines at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). In addition, they participate to 3 tutorials² at ILL, ESRF, IBS, and/or CNRS. Last, those who follow only 2 tutorials also participate to a lab³, taking place at ILL, Institut Néel, or IBS, allowing them to discover an additional technique they are not used to.

All practicals, labs, and tutorials last a half-day and are addressed to small groups of 4 to 6 participants. See a typical list of techniques in the last section.

    ¹ practicals = hands-on experiments at large scale facilities (neutron, synchrotron, FEL)
    ² tutorials = neutron and/or synchrotron radiation data treatment
    ³ labs = hands-on experiments using labs apparatus (X-rays, NMR, microscope, ...)
 

Practicals and Tutorials OUTSIDE Grenoble

In addition, practicals are organised for the full-time participants on one site among our six partner facilities:
→ the Spanish synchrotron source ALBA near Barcelona,
→ the French synchrotron radiation facility SOLEIL near Paris,
→ the Italian synchrotron light source Elettra and Free Electron laser Radiation for Multidisciplinary Investigations (FERMI) in Trieste,
→ the German synchrotron radiation facility Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) and the European XFEL in Hamburg,
→ the KIT Light Source in Karlsruhe
→ the Swiss synchrotron radiation facility Swiss Light Source (SLS) at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen.

The participants are again distributed in groups of four for the practicals and, depending on the partner site, these hands-on experiments last a half-day or an entire day. Some partner sites also organize tutorials, either to complete the practicals training or to offer additional techniques (like, e.g., at the Swiss Spallation Neutron Source (SINQ) of PSI).
 

DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRACTICALS, LABS, AND tutorials among the participants

In December, the participants are asked to fill in a questionnaire asking for:

• what experiments they have already performed at large scale facilities (on what instrument) and those they plan to do,
• their research topic,
• their wishes, through a rating of the various techniques that are proposed.

Based on this information, the members of the organising committee in charge of the practicals organisation will allocate to the participants selected practicals, labs, and tutorials. The individual programmes for the practicals, labs, and tutorials, will be done in the best possible way (regarding the many constraints) with respect to their main research interests and wishes expressed. Each participant will follow about 14 half-days of practicals, labs, and tutorials, during the whole school.
All participants will be required to attend the entire practical / tutorial / lab program assigned to them during the Hercules school.