DeFunk

Since Google isn't pulling much up on the subject, nor do I know precisely what type of testing it would be referred to as far as to the consumer.

Please reply and/or PM with any information that you may have. I appreciate it.

I<3Strippers!

Uh, wtf are you trying to do with it, if I might ask?

Fabrik8

My mom works for a molecular biology lab that has one, what do you want to know? It's not for hire, I'm just curious what you're getting at...

Rosco The Iroc

Will you be checking Anomalous Materials with it?

ufctapout

GC/MS is used in drug testing.

(Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry)

I<3Strippers!

I picked that up on a 5 minute search, I wanna know what the Ops plans are

ufctapout

He's going to steal the Declaration of Independence.

burnoutboy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6jYnLw9kp4

DeFunk

Heh, no.

I was under the impression it would give one an idea of the chemical make up of a substance. I'm not a physics or chemistry major to say the least (IT only), so I only had to go by on what I had read.

As to the substance I wanted to test. The snow. Though that was dependent solely on the price to have such a test performed (of which I still am unsure as to what the name of the "test" would be - hence my reference to the spectrometer).

<shrug> Now, why the snow? I've got two buddies (one in PA the other in NW VA) insisting the snow contains plastic -- instead of arguing with them one way or another, I figured I'd simply pay to have the snow here (at least) tested.

I did out of sheer curiosity decide to hit up Youtube and there are quite a few videos there, where people are "burning" snow with a lighter, stating it smelled of "plastic". One even tests the lighter against an ice cube (snow is not an ice cube I get that trust me) to show "proof" that the snow is "fake." I also managed to find this today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daYYs...layer_embedded

Not quite sure WTF I'm looking at, besides it being a sample of something under a microscope with what appears to be black donuts floating around. The fiber looks to be just some cloth to me, but, I am the untrained eye. Long story short.. unless it is ridiculously expensive, just finding the composition of it, printed out, etc. by a lab would be the end all to it.

Sorry for the late response, I honestly didn't think the thread would get much attention if any, so I neglected to check on it until just now.

Fabrik8

Snow is just like acid rain. Pure condensate picks up other substances from the atmosphere as it condenses and as it travels downward. So whatever is causing the plastic smell is some constituent chemical compound that is probably also in plastic. I don't think the snow contains any polymeric compounds, no.

The black donuts in that video look like light and shadows from bubbles. It's a optical illusion, you can tell when the black donuts pop and disappear. It wouldn't surprise me at all that sleet would contain carbon and soot from the atmosphere though. Especially if you collected some from China.

The thing is, if you put snow in a mass spec, you would see all of the elements that it picked up. You wouldn't see plastic if there was plastic in it, you'd see all of the chemical signatures that make up the plastic.