When younger
I tolerated removal
of certain key electrons
& whether by causal mishap
or misguided melancholy
they are now oddly missed.
It is memory’s resistance.
The ungainly weight
of specific sorrows.
Why the net positive self
in the mass spectrometer
lays determinate claim
to massless parts of self,
mother reading on the veranda,
father’s fist before the lathe.
It is memory’s resistance.
Its evincible assessment,
its improbable sense.
Why my ion path in the field
lightly bends in the direction
of their last known heading.
A mass spectrometer removes one or more electrons from an atom. The electrons are so light that removing them hardly changes the mass of the atom at all. The spectrometer then sends the atom through a magnetic field, a region of space that exerts a force on magnetic or electrically charged particles. Because of the missing electrons, the atom has more protons than electrons and hence a net positive charge. The magnetic field bends the path of the positively charged atom as it moves through the field. The amount of bending depends on the atom’s mass. Lighter atoms will be affected more strongly than heavier atoms. By measuring how much the atom’s path curves, a scientist can determine the atom’s mass. Encarta 2003.
1 March 2012