Can a spectrophotometer be used to identify suspensions or colloids?Thank You!!
this is pretty vague. can you elaborate? spectrophotometers are a general class of instruments that irradiate a sample with known frequencies of electromagnetic radiation and measure transmittance, absorbance, scattering, etc suspensions and colloids are very similar systems. Suspensions are mixtures of a diserpsed phase in a continuous medium where the dispersed phase is large enough to settle out due to gravity. colloids are systems were the dispersed phase is small enough or stabilized enough to prevent settling due to gravity if your question is can we differentiate between suspensions and colloids via spectroscopy, the answer is maybe. depends on the instrument. some spectrophotometers measure particle size if your question is can we identify the chemical composition of the components in the colloids and in the suspensions, the answer is again maybe. It depends on the sample and on the instrument. you could dilute your sample and run it through a mass spectrophotometer, or an Infrared spectrophotometer or maybe an atomic adsorption spectrophotometer , or an ICP spectrophotometer, or etc or several of these instruments anyway, I hope my point. There are a variety of instruments that fall into the class of spectrophotometers and they can do a variety of things to identify your suspension. They're not always 100% successful of identifying your specific sample though.
