3094: Mass Spec

Mass Spec

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Title text: Patients at least found it to be an improvement over Millikan's incredibly messy and unpleasant oil drop suspension procedure.

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Explanation

This explanation is incomplete: This page was created by HARVEY FLETCHER (UNCREDITED). Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

In the early 1920s, the domestic bathroom scale (initially a form of spring scale) was introduced to customers in the United States of America. The device soon became popular, and has remained so to the present. Although means to ascertain the weight of the human body existed before the 1920s, they were not in common use, and were not thought necessary in routine physical / medical examinations.

The joke in this comic arises from the claim that, before the invention of the "modern" bathroom scale, human body weights needed to be obtained, not by the earlier, less convenient, forms of scale technology which were actually used, but by absurd, Rube Goldberg-esque, implementations of mass spectrometry.

Mass spectrometry, a late 19th-century invention (thus, available only a few decades earlier than the bathroom scale), was developed to obtain the masses of atomic particles by ascertaining their mass-to-charge ratios. The basic steps, as represented in the comic, are ionization of the mass (rubbing the scalp with the balloon), separating the resulting particles on the basis of their mass-to-charge ratio by firing them through a magnetic field (jumping past the magnet), and observing the resulting amount of path deflection on a detector (the target). Since the ionization procedure for bona fide mass-spectrometry assays involves turning the mass to be analyzed into a gas, the method would quickly be recognized as unsuited for obtaining human body weights, especially over the course of a dieting program, and become unpopular^{[citation needed]}. There are other ionization techniques to transfer larger compounds intact into the gas phase, but a human body would be way too heavy to be analyzable by this technique.

The title text compares the mass-spectrometry-based method for obtaining human body weights with the method based on the Milliken-Fletcher procedure, also available only a few years prior to bathroom scales, in which the mass to be analyzed takes the form of atomized oil droplets that are ionized by X-rays. Neither is suited for weight measurements over time scales of any length, but the cleanup procedures for a human body converted into ionized gas are certainly less onerous than those for a similar mass converted into an oil spray. The original procedure was intended to determine the mass of an electron, based on the known mass/density of the oil droplets. The title text seems to imply the converse, determining the mass/density of a person based on the (now) known mass of an electron.

Note: Randall uses the correct term "mass spectrometry". The term "mass spectroscopy" was used in the beginnings of the technique but is not used anymore. Today, a spectroscopy method entails the interaction of matter with electromagnetic radiation (e.g. IR light - as in IR spectroscopy or radio waves - as in NMR spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy). In the case of mass spectrometry, this is not the case. Here, ions are manipulated or interacting with static electric and/or magnetic fields and thereby the mass-to-charge ratio is determined. Both "spectrometry" and "spectroscopy" allude to a "spectrum" of possible results that can be used to quantify and qualify any inputs being measured, and a distribution of molecular weights can be usefully represented in a rainbow-like visual, but doesn't bear any direct relation with the electromagnetic spectrum, hence the technical name difference. People "in the trade" often abbreviate it as "mass spec", which could stand for either term.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Ponytail, wearing a lab coat, is giving a balloon to Cueball. Behind Cueball, there is a ramp on the ground, a magnet hanging from the ceiling, and a target on a poster on the wall.]

Ponytail: Rub this balloon against your head, then go jump past that magnet toward the target on the wall.

[Caption below the panel:]

Before the bathroom scale was invented, the only way to weigh people was mass spectrometry.

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Discussion

Site issues

Took me about 10 goes to get to the page, and there's nothing here. And I can't even get to previous pages, they won't load! Is it broken forevers? 172.71.154.176 04:26, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

The site has been behaving erratically for at least the last four comics, but this is the worst it's been. 172.68.22.109 06:50, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

If you look at something like the New User stats, which is a handy indicator of traffic (albeit of overwhelmingly "spam accounts" created, that generally then do nothing), you can track the reduced number of 'regular spambot' traffic as having started roughly on 12/May. This agrees almost exactly with the usage stats (either a depression of 'normal traffic', or a notable increase in all traffic; or both as, like here, there's mild inconvenience for proper users while the background hum of traditional spambot attempts gets vastly cut down because they're more easily thwarted by the newly-overwhelming amount of scraping/whatevering going on) on other online places that I have an interest in, which each have had varying degrees of having been able to counter it.

It's hard to discern from any of explainxkcd's statistics that I can easily get hold of and analyse, but in other places it seems like there's been a 24-hour cycle (and possibly a weekday/weekend difference) that seems to indicate that the most pressure is happening during some sort of 'business hours' cycle. Perhaps suggesting that it isn't just a massive web-trawling scraper left to run upon every site it finds, but actually might be a more semi-automated "click click click" by a regular workforce. It suggests maybe a Russian thing (give or take a specific time-zone/working pattern), though also goes down through the Black Sea area, the general area of Arabia and bits of East Africa. Or, others suggest, it's something is being deliberately done out of (local) working hours, in which case it would suggest that it's being thrown out from one or other TZ in North America (but doesn't actually fit the traditional tech-hubs of the west-coast).

Without access to any original IP ranges (which can easily be faked/proxyed, if anyone cares to), no-one I've otherwise discussed this with can say for sure. But the consensus is definitely that some grand project was started from maybe the 10th of May and built up at least until the 13th, after which there seems to have been a sustained level of disruption.

I've never had a "10 goes to get to a page" in this period of problems (surprisingly often, no retries needed; second go usually works, if necessary; third, maybe on occasion... fourth+ very rarely), but I also tend to wait a few seconds before retrying. And wait a few more seconds before re-retrying, if necessary. That way, I'm not adding to the server load unduly (remember, guys, if you ever are using a site-scraper, do remember to include a decent 'sleep time' between your pokes and prods; throttle your traffic, lest you throttle everyone elses!), and perhaps (if the culprits are using rough sleep-cycles between each batch of 'gets', or at least their automated systems are now hitting loads of 503s/etc and wisely backing off a bit from their own connectivity mess) you'll be luckier in five, ten, twenty seconds or so and now be requesting your (more legitimate) responses during a self-imposed lull in whatever process was previously overloading it.

I feel your pain. But perhaps I'm just a bit more relaxed about the whole thing, having previously been very well used to slow modem connections or, if on a campus network, knowing that every now and then that the 'fat pipe' across the Atlantic might go down and severly reduce the ability to telnet sites on the other side of the Pond... ;) 172.70.58.168 12:59, 27 May 2025 (UTC) [ Unless I am given a reason to edit this again, I have needed... *0* ... repeat attempts to post this response (though the entirely responsive CAPTCHA didn't believe me until the third attempt at telling it what was motorcyles/bicycles, on the very first attempt!). Fingers crossed, eh? ;) ]

Ya know, this all sounds more and more like a short story by Orson Scott Card, played out with bits instead of germs. Maybe we should all be laying in stocks of goose quills, charcoal, and birch bark. 172.71.146.129 14:43, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

I added a "We Need Help!" message to the Admin Requests page, and it took me 39 tries for the comment to successfully post. (Try 6 to post this, BTW.) -- Dtgriscom (talk) 01:01, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

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I believe the first way to weigh someone was a balance beam and goats (Doctor office balance scale). 172.71.223.147 04:32, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

I thought the original way to measure someone's weight was to shake their hand.172.70.85.5 11:12, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Or to see if they weigh the same as a duck, of course. BunsenH (talk) 15:17, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Interesting. Who am is quite munged. 172.70.42.119 04:37, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Was quite munged: "172.70.42.119 04:37, 27 May 2025 (UTC" 172.68.245.164 04:51, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Unlike a bathroom scale, this apparatus measures mass, not weight. So apart from the obvious fact that it's not remotely sensitive enough, it would work on a space station. 162.158.186.119 07:49, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Why wouldn't they use the Archimedes principle? Lower person into a tub of water, measure volume of water that overflows, calculate weight of the water. That was known since 246 BC. Mschmitt (talk) 18:40, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

That would measure volume, not weight. However, note that Archimedes principle was method to measure volume, which was not possible before, using already existing ability to measure weight. -- Hkmaly (talk) 23:39, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Well, technically, if you force a body to fully submerge in water (noting how much of a full bath/etc of water you spill), then allow it to float naturally (noting how much extra water you can put back in - or just do it the other way round, see how much water you expel when floating and how much additional water when dunking), then this'll give you useful density, volume and weight information. At least if what you're measuring does float (and doesn't dissolve, etc). 172.70.58.130 00:12, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Well, for some objects this might work. For humans, not so much, as humans BREATHE and with it, change volume AND density. Anyway, Archimedes were already able to measure weight, because method for that existed since 3rd millennium BC, using balance weighing scales. He might've actually be submerging such scales in water as method to measure density, according to Galileo Galilei. -- Hkmaly (talk) 01:10, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

I suggest adding a few more measurements, "...then this'll give you useful density, volume, weight information and respiration rate." ;) Of course, this is 'respiration weight whilst floating in water', which might acrually be lower than whilst standing/sitting in the dry, but only for those not previously traumatised by near-drowning, being a hydrophobe or unfamiliar with the the pleasures of a nice bath. Any of which might have been more or less of an issue in such a historic era. :P 162.158.216.169 23:37, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

Given the history of dieting and 'health' programmes, it has to be significantly doubtful that a method being unsuitable, and even dangerous, would make it unpopular.172.68.229.21 08:51, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
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