What does the mass spectrum in mass spectrometry reveal?

The mass spectrum in mass spectrometry is a powerful analytical tool that reveals the masses of ions produced from a sample and provides information about the relative abundances of these ions. It does this by measuring the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) of ions, which can be derived from the mass of the molecular ions and their fragments.

When a sample is ionized in the mass spectrometer, it produces positively or negatively charged ions. These ions are then separated based on their mass-to-charge ratios, and a detector counts the number of ions at each m/z value. The resulting mass spectrum displays peaks, where each peak corresponds to a different ion, indicating its mass and the height of the peak reflects the relative abundance of that ion in the sample.

Thus, the mass spectrum conclusively provides information about not only the masses of different isotopes of an element present in the sample but also the relative percentages of those isotopes. This is crucial for understanding the elemental composition of the sample and identifying compounds based on their isotopic patterns.

Other options, such as revealing atomic structure, providing unique spectra for isotopes, or detailing the energy levels of electrons, do not accurately represent the information provided by mass spectrometry. Instead, the focus lies squarely