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Hello, everybody. My
name is Brandon Ruotolo.
Professor, Faculty Director of
the University of Michigan
Biological Mass Spectrometry
facility and associate
chair for research in
the Department of Chemistry,
University of Michigan.
Today, I'll be giving you
an introduction to
mass spectrometry.
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To begin, I wanted to motivate
the importance of
mass spectrometry.
As we'll come to
learn today, this is
a keystone technology
in measurement science.
Throughout our natural world,
there exists a
plethora of mixtures.
For example, the cell,
the foundational
element of biology,
seemingly simple,
actually contains
over a million different
chemical components
that scientists are very
concerned with trying to
quantify, identify, and
assign structure to.
If I shift my gaze
to samples acquired from the
environment, for example,
from this reservoir, you
can see pictured here,
this sample might
contain over 100 million
different chemical
components of interest.
Even the vacuum of space is well
known to contain hundreds of
different chemical components
that we are concerned with
measuring to evaluate what's
happening in that environment.
Complex mixtures don't just
exist in the natural world.
They also are the product of
human synthesis and other
scientific endeavors.
For example, polymer synthesis
very typically carried out
in the chemical industry.
These types of endeavors can
usually result in
samples that contain
hundreds of different
chemical components
that I would want to evaluate,
measure, quantify, as a
way of trying to improve
the synthesis process that
we're trying to develop.
I can also take a look
at material synthesis.
For example, materials
designed for
energy storage or
consumer products.
These types of materials
can often have
hundreds of thousands
of chemical
products associated with them.
In some cases, I don't
just want to know
what chemicals are
present there,
I also want to
know where they're
located on that surface.
You can see from my slide,
science is replete
with mixtures,
and for every one of these
challenging problems
there exists a mass
spectrometry-based solution.
