By Anonymous on Thursday, March 18, 2004 - 02:55 am:
Does the expression tandem mass spectrometry have the exactly the same meaning with MS^n? Is there any subtile difference between the 2 expressions?
By MG on Thursday, March 18, 2004 - 07:35 am:
Good question. As best I can tell, they are the same in terms of popular usage, but this might come down to a matter of opinion. We could do some semantic nitpicking:
tan·dem adj. Having two identical components arranged one behind the other. (Source: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (via dictionary.com))
With this definition, it would seem that only the the triple-quad is tandem, if "one behind the other" is taken to mean in physical space.
By Anonymous on Thursday, March 18, 2004 - 02:02 pm:
Can't one behind the other be taken in terms of one mass (daughter) behind the other (precursor)?
By Anonymous on Thursday, March 18, 2004 - 10:51 pm:
Tandem mass spectrometry is MS^2. MS^n experiments, where n is greater than 2, can be carried out in ion trap machines (MS/MS/MS/...).