How can a machine tell you the composition of something??
In: Chemistry
Here’s your sample. Hit it with something mildly energetic, like a beam of electrons. Some of the sample’s atom and molecules will be kicked off, and ionized (lose an electron). There ions have a positive charge, and can be accelerated by an electric field. This stream of sample ions is then exposed To a magnetic field. The field causes the stream to bend into an arc ( for reasons. Trust me.) But the heavier bits are not bent as much as the light bits, so the stream spreads out into a fan with bits distributed according to their masses. Then you detect all these spread-out bits, and the data is the mass spectrum.
You can use this mass data to figure out exactly what kind of atoms and molecules came from the sample.
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