This incident happened few years ago. I was doing my masters' degree project in IGCAR, Kalpakkam. For my studies, I had to take some electron microscopy images. There were no SEMs available in IGCAR and I had to go to IIT-Chennai for that. My advisor asked me to look for a professor in IIT-Chennai who was in-charge of an SEM. He mentioned that the professor will help me out to obtain the images.
So, me and another student who was working in the same project went all the way to IIT-Chennai. We found the professor and he said that he was busy and there will be some assistants who can help us to get the images. He introduced us to the assistants and asked them to help us out and left.
We tried to explain our work to the assistants and mentioned them what we wanted. They told that its quite difficult for them since they were new and not having much expertise with the tool to look into the nanostructures we wanted. But, they told that they can give a try. We sat with them and even after a couple of hours scanning through the sample, we couldn't see anything.
We were about to give up. Suddenly, a person, may be in his late 50's came into the lab. The assistants knew him and he was a technical expert from the company that manufacture the SEM. He looked into what we were trying out and took control of the machine and within an hour, we had what we were looking for.
He mentioned that he didn't come to IIT-Chennai for any big purpose. Once the job was done, he just left. It was quite amazing and it looked as if he came there to help us out. Those images really helped to validate our studies.
Well... could be just a coincidence or...?
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