Question

What does a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer do?

Answer 1

Well, it usually sits in the corner of an air-conditioned basement.....

Explanation:

....in a clean office, with no wet chemicals, and it usually employs a couple of technicians to run the service (who no doubt appreciate the air-conditioning). It requires regular servicing, and modern machines require liquid helium cooling (itself insulated by liquid nitrogen cooling), and so the coolants have to be topped up periodically to maintain the superconducting temperature.

And so the NMR machine requires not only a very large capital outlay, but also a very large operating outlay from week to week.

What do you get for all this?

NMR spectroscopy provides a direct method of spectroscopic analysis, principally for `""^1H` and `""^13C` nuclei, that can address the structure and connectivity of most organic compounds. Other forms of spectroscopy, `""^11B`, and `""^31P`, are also widely used.