Referring to arbitrary labels?

I have a problem that seems 'generic'..(meaning I suppose a similar 
problem could arise in various contexts)

- I have a series of Experiments in the thesis; I would like to number 
these Experiment 1, Experiment 2 and so on. They are all sections, but 
not every section is an Experiment..also, they are spread out across 
different chapters.

So, I tried

\newcounter{expt}
\setcounter{expt}{1}

and whenever I have an Experiment (typically a \section), I used

\section{Experiment \arabic{expt}: Experiment name}
\addtocounter{expt}{1}


Works great, except that now I cannot refer back to this particular 
experiment. I tried:
\section{Experiment \arabic{expt}: Experiment name\label{expt1}}

but a \ref{expt1} returns, naturally, the section number, and not the 
experiment number...

so I cannot say ".. in Experiment \ref{expt1}... "

Any ideas/suggestions? I would be most grateful!

Currently I'm naming the experiments by their section number, as:

\section{Experiment \arabic{chapter}.\arabic{section}: Experiment name}

which is not elegant, but is at least consistent..

Thanks for any suggestions!!!

Mohinish

mohinish shukla
cognitive neuroscience sector
scuola internazionale superiore di studi avanzati
via beirut 2-4
trieste 34014, italy
+39 040 3787 613 (off)
+39 040 3787 615 (fax)

--------------------- Info ---------------------
Mac-TeX Website: http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/
          & FAQ: http://latex.yauh.de/faq/
TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
List Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX-yNUTs0qEFpZ/1wmUHrjjoYdd74u8MsAO@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>