Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy
I will only say a few things about NMR for right now. It is beautiful.
The spectrometer has a superconducting magnet inside, which is kept cool
by being bathed in liquid Helium,
which is then kept cool by an outer dewar full of liquid Nitrogen.
The magnetic field causes the nuclei of atoms with certain nuclear spins
to align either with or against the magnet. Slightly more align with than
against, and the stronger the magnet, the greater the population
difference. We exploit these population differences in ways I will not
explain, and end up acquiring data that, on good days, yields incredible
structural information about the sample being studied (on bad days, it
yields information such as "the molecule is aggregated" or "the sample
denatured" or "this sample is impure" or "this is just plain water" or
"this is too big to look at" or "you think this is isotopically labelled?
ha!" etc). If you are interested in learning more, try a few NMR related
links I have listed in my Science
page, or visit our Biological NMR
Facility web page.