A classroom is a room in which classes are held. Classrooms are found in educational institutions of all kinds, from preschools to universities, and may also be found in other places where education or training is provided, such as corporations and religious and humanitarian organizations. The classroom attempts to provide a space where learning can take place uninterrupted by outside distractions.

There’s a lot of advice kicking around about how to do a successful PhD. You can now attend all manner of courses taught by a range of self-appointed experts. You may come away with some good ideas, but the advice may also seem pretty banal and obvious. Some of the advice out there on doing a PhD is excellent and thorough, but I find much to be superficial, obvious, or even misleading.

But sometimes, all you need is to get away from them, concentrate on something else, and suddenly an idea comes to help you proceeding further and maybe explain the results. In our March issue of In the classroom, Renren Deng tells us how this happened to him when he first observed a variation in the color of the light emitted from the nano crystals he was studying if he simply shook the sample.

The Results can lead to results that could lead to more efficient opto-electronic devices.