Abstract
The gas source mass spectrometer is one of the most precise analytical instruments in existence. These sophisticated machines have evolved from complex and finicky homemade ‘beasts’ to robust, commercially available units. Although stability and maintenance have been dramatically improved, surprisingly, the sensitivity and precision attainable with a conventional gas source mass spectrometer have not changed appreciably over the last half century. The advantages that have been made center more on ease of use, allowing the geochemist to spend more time addressing scientific questions and less time working to collect data. This chapter reviews the fundamentals of mass spectrometry and the basic methods of application to different isotopic systems. The applications to natural sciences are clearly enormous, but the emphasis of this communication is the fundamentals of the technical aspects of stable isotope analysis and gas source mass spectrometry.
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