I don't have a clue where to start with this problem: Carbon has two stable isotopes, 12/6C and 13/6C, and fluorine has only one stable isotope, 19/9F. How many peaks would you observe in the mass spectrum of the positive ion of CF4+? Assume that the ion does not break up into smaller fragments. All 4 of the F's in the molecule would have a mass of 19, and the total for 4 of them would be 19x4 =

Question

I don't have a clue where to start with this problem: Carbon has two stable isotopes, 12/6C and 13/6C, and fluorine has only one stable isotope, 19/9F. How many peaks would you observe in the mass spectrum of the positive ion of CF4+? Assume that the ion does not break up into smaller fragments.

All 4 of the F's in the molecule would have a mass of 19, and the total for 4 of them would be 19x4 = 76. The mass of the C could be either 12 or 13. Therefore CF4+ could have a mass of either 88 or 89 amu. The charge of CF4+ would be +e. There are only two possible value of the charge/mass ratio, and two mass spectrometer peaks, assuming you have only singly ionized CF4+ and there is no fragmentiation.

john · Answer

prolly 2 idk man