Electron ionization

Okay kiddo, you know that everything in the world is made up of tiny little things we call atoms, right? And inside those atoms, there are even tinier particles called electrons, protons, and neutrons.

Now, imagine we want to study an atom and see what's inside it. We can use something called electron ionization to do that. It's like taking a picture of the atom and seeing all its parts.

Here's how it works: we shoot a beam of high-energy electrons at the atom we want to study. These electrons hit the atom and knock out one of the electrons inside it, turning it into a positively charged ion. This is just like hitting a ball really hard and making it fly out of the park.

Now that we have our ion, we can put it into a special machine called a mass spectrometer. This machine separates all of the different particles in the ion based on their weight. We can then measure those different particles and learn more about what's inside the atom.

Electron ionization is really helpful for scientists who want to understand the chemical properties of different substances. It's like taking a sneak peek inside things to see how they're made.