How can a machine tell you the composition of something??
In: Chemistry
you can think of a mass spectrometer as a super expensive fancy scale. it’s expensive and fancy because instead of lbs or kgs, it measures the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) of whatever you throw n there. there are different kinds of mass specs, but generally there are 3 components: the ion source, mass analyzer, and detector. the idea is you zap a sample via the ion source (e.g. by electrospray ionization, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization etc.), the mass analyzer sorts ions by their mass-to-charge ratio (time-of-flight, Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance, etc), and the detector records the signal that becomes the mass spectrum (plotted as intensity of detected ions as a function of the m/z ratio). once you have your mass spectrum, you can identify what’s in your sample by correlating known masses to the masses in the sample, or by analyzing the ion fragmentation patterns. other compound separation methods are often used with mass spec (like liquid/gas chromatography, UV spectroscopy etc) to further separate the components of a sample you’re trying to study.
this is a huge oversimplification of mass spec because this rabbit hole goes deep
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