The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has acquired a Wasserburg mass spectrometer, completed in 1968 by Professor Gerald J. Wasserburg of the California Institute of Technology.

Mass spectrometry is a cornerstone technique across various scientific disciplines, enabling precise analysis of complex samples, characterization of atom clusters and molecules, and elucidation of ...

In Star Trek, Mr. Spock’s hand-held tricorder can instantly tell what something is made of. We don’t have tricorders yet, but we’re getting close. Portable devices just a little too big to hold in one ...

The idea that light can behave as both a particle and a wave is one of the strange central concepts in quantum mechanics known as wave-particle duality. Towards the end of the 19 th century and the ...

Mass spectrometry is already a powerful tool for determining what kind and how many molecules are present in a given sample. But most instruments still analyze their molecules one or just a few at a ...

Sponsored by PittconReviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc.Feb 12 2026 The idea that light can behave as both a particle and a wave is one of the strange central concepts in quantum mechanics known as ...