By what means is composition of totally unknown liquid determined?
In: Chemistry
This sort of ID is a chemistry task, and they have multiple tools at their disposal, from simple things like checking pH (acidity), osmolality (salt concentration), density, reactivity (whether it reacts with various known chemicals), to more complex stuff like [infrared analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_spectroscopy) and [mass spectrometry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry).
Spectroscopy in general is very revealing, because various elements and chemicals glow with different colors when burned or subjected to various frequencies of light, and a very sensitive instrument can detect these different colors. It’s the same method for figuring out what materials are in stars and distant planets out there.
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