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Topic: Mass spectroscopy  (Read 3464 times)

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Offline Alwaysinbed

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Mass spectroscopy
« on: September 05, 2012, 12:02:47 PM »
Please bear with me, Im not sure if Im in the right forum, my English is bad and it took a year for me to register here, well....

My question is concerning an assignment in a new course Im following which is about analytical spectroscopy and we are now learning about mass spectrometry which have caused me a big headache already. It seems like the internet is emptied out on information about how to interpret mass spectrums.

I am given a not very "busy" mass spectrum of an unknown molecule and a table that tells me about m/z and abundance. The table is:

m/z---abundance
28-----24
29-----100 (base peak)
30-----58 (M+)
31-----0.65 (M+1)
32-----0.12 (M+2)

Now Im asked a couple of questions, first of all I have to use the ratio between M+1 and M+
and the ratio between M+2 and M+ to decide which substance the spectrum is about. Then Im asked what the molecular formula for the substance is and to figure out the exact mass of the molecular ion.

The toughest question for me is the first one. Should I just divide some numbers or what?
Thank you.


Offline Vidya

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Re: Mass spectroscopy
« Reply #1 on: September 07, 2012, 09:05:50 AM »
Ratio of the abundance ::   58 (M+) :0.65 (M+1) : 0.12 (M+2)
Pick up the smallest number 0.12 and divide every number with that number to get the simplest ratio.


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