That Is a Mass Spectrometer?
Abstract
Mass spectrosoopes are instruments used to determine
masses of charged particles. These instruments are used for
such things as determination of the chemical composition of
compounds and accurate measurement of isotopic masses and
their abundances. Such close determinations of isotopic
masses have played an important part in the development of
modern physics. The basis of mass spectroscopes is the
action of force fields on charged particles. Different
instruments apply these forces in different ways to beams
of these charged particles. In all mass speotroscopes,
however, the three main functional parts are the ion source,
the analyzer, and the detector.