Abstract
Ahh, relaxation. Say it slowly, and the word itself conjures calming images—a hammock in the sun, a cool breeze at the beach, or a mug of hot chocolate on a snowy day. No matter how you like to wind down after a tough week or stressful semester, relaxation is about releasing pent up energy and returning to a lower energy state that you think of as normal.
You know, what these people do is really very clever. They put little spies into the molecules and send radio signals to them, and they have to radio back what they are seeing.
(Felix Bloch recalling Niels Bohr’s description of nuclear magnetic resonance).
J. Mattson and M. Simon, The Pioneers of NMR and Magnetic Resonance In Medicine: The Story of MRI (Bar-Ilan University Press, Jericho, 1996).
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Notes
- 1.
Spin-lattice relaxation is a confusing name because energy is released to the surroundings in both types of relaxation, T 1 and T 2 but that’s the way it is!
- 2.
To learn why this curve is shaped like a “U,” see Chap. 16 of “Spin Dynamics” by M. Levitt (2001).
References and Further Reading
Cantor CR, Schimmel PR (1980) Biophysical chemistry part II: techniques for the study of biological structure and function, Chap. 9. W. H. Freeman and Company, New York.
Cavanagh J, Fairbrother WJ, Palmer AG III, Rance M, Skeleton NJ (2007) Protein NMR spectroscopy: principles and practice, 2nd edn., Chaps. 1 and 5. Academic Press, Amerstdam.
Grzesiek S (2007) Notes on relaxation and dynamics from EMBO Practical Course on NMR, Basel, September 7–14.
Levitt M (2001) Spin dynamics: basics of nuclear magnetic resonance, Chaps. 7 and 16. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Chichester.
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Doucleff, M., Hatcher-Skeers, M., Crane, N.J. (2011). Silencing of the Bells: Relaxation Theory Part One. In: Pocket Guide to Biomolecular NMR. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-16251-0_4
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