Why are NH3 and H2) considered to be nucleophiles?
I’m assuming you meant H2O… Both ammonia and water are nucleophiles because of their ion pair(s) of electrons. These negative charges are attracted to the slight positive charge on some atoms in chemical bonds (the carbon atom in carbonyl groups springs to mind.) Because the electrons of water and ammonia are attracted to positive charges and the nucleus contains the positive charge, these compounds are considered to be nucleophillic A parent ion usually has one of two meanings. From your questions, I suspect that you are dealing with GC/MS and not LC/MS, LC/MS/MS, or GC/MS/MS. If these assumptions are true, then the parent ion will be the molecular ion. In other words, it will be the ion with the same mass to charge ratio (m/z) as the molecular weight of the molecule (16 for methane, 18 for water, 32 for oxygen, 86 for hexane, etc.) In GS/MS the charge is nearly always 1, so the m/z of the ion is the same as the mass of the ion. There are many peaks for the ions in GC/MS because the
