 Measuring the magnetic resonance of crystals first involved growing the crystals , a simple procedure often done by elementary school students . The crystals then had to be prepared by skillfully cutting them into sections with facets that had an orientation different from the internal structure of the crystal , and the response to a magnetic field had to be painstakingly measured . While his crystals were growing , Rabi read James Clerk Maxwell 's 1873 A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism , which inspired an easier method . He lowered a crystal on a glass fiber attached to a torsion balance into a solution whose magnetic susceptibility could be varied between two magnetic poles . When it matched that of the crystal , the magnet could be turned on and off without disturbing the crystal . The new method was not only much less work , it also produced a more accurate result . Rabi sent his thesis , entitled On the Principal Magnetic Susceptibilities of Crystals , to Physical Review on 16 July 1926 . He married Helen the next day . The paper attracted little fanfare in academic circles , although it was read by Kariamanickam Srinivasa Krishnan , who used the method in his own investigations of crystals . Rabi concluded that he needed to promote his work as well as publish it . 
