Was watching a documentary on how the naturally occurring psychedelic found in the fungus ergot was isolated and used to synthesize LSD. Obviously this ‘boring’ science stuff was skipped over but I am now curious how this is done!
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There are lots of instruments chemists have at their disposal for identifying compounds, and you generally use quite a few of them, each which provides a little piece of the puzzle.
Mass spectrometry, gas chromatographs, nuclear magnetic resonance, these would give you a decent start, plus any number of little chemical tests for different functional groups.
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