Where in the pharmaceutical industry is the mass spectrometer used?
The mass spectrometer can be used to work out the structure of a molecule. So for example if you have isolated a chemical from a plant that you might think had healing properties, you can fire it into a mass spectrometer (it somehow splits into fragments) and you will then get an analysis with peaks showing at various different mass weights. So for example you might recognise classic peaks at CH3 for the methyl group. You will also get peaks which show how many hydrogens are in neighbouring groups. From analysing all the peaks, including the largest one which will give you the total mass of the compound, you can work out the structure of the unknown possible medicinal compound.
