PLEASE HELP!! THANKS IN ADVANCE! QUESTION: Your name is Dale Buckendahl you are

Question

PLEASE HELP!! THANKS IN ADVANCE!

QUESTION: Your name is Dale Buckendahl you are NASA's chief engineer with the assigned task to design instruments to identify organic molecules on Mars' surface. Since Mars is a 10 month trip from earth you must include all instruments necessary to identify and quantify organic molecules on Mars' surface. Which instruments would you include in your design? Please be specific and state a rationale for why you have included a given piece of instrumentation.

Answer should be in the following pattern:

1. Title:Please describe the procedure to be conducted (i.e. rough separation).

2. Description of Procedure: Please describe which the respective analytical procedure. Some questions that should be addressed are:

When taking this exam please consider the following question?What samples they want analyze?What they are looking for (specifically) from each analysis?What analytical techniques are most appropriate?What detection limits can be achieved by each method.

3.Rationale for ProcedureWhat would constitute a ‘normal ‘concentrations?Whether the sample is likely to be a mixture of components?If qualitative analysis is required? Why?If quantitative data is required? Why?

Explanation / Answer

The purpose of the project is to design instruments for identifying organic molecules on the surface of Mars. The design of any equipment must take into consideration the characteristics of the sample to be analyzed, environmental conditions, ability and ease of sample collection and finally the separation and idnetificacion of the components. In principle, it is very rare to find pure samples of elements or compounds in such complex environments, it is more common to find mixtures thereof. Then clearly you should take the separation phase as the key for the subsequent identification of the components of a given sample.

As for the characteristics of the sample, the most obvious is the state of matter that it presents, in order to identify organic molecules you should take into account the possible states, you can find gaseous, liquid or solid samples. Environmental conditions also affect the collection of samples but it can be solved by the use of mechanical arms to collect the desired samples according to the analyst instructions.

Once the samples are collected, their components must separated. You can use common laboratory methods as decantation, filtration, extraction, crystallization, distillation, centrifugation and chromatography, the correct method will depend on the properties of the particular sample, appearance, melting or boiling point, physical condition, among others to consider. It is generally recommended to use a gas chromatograph coupled with mass spectrometry GC-MS, this allows separation through the chromatographic column and the mass spectrometer provides information about the molecular weight of each separated component. In addition, it is recommended to use infrared equipment to characterize the functional groups present in the sample, proton and carbon 13 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance NMR for the allocation of the positions of the proton and carbon atoms to build the final structure of the molecules of interest.

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