ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Prolate trochoidal mass spectrometer

A prolate trochoidal mass spectrometer is a very special tool that helps scientists understand what kinds of things are inside different materials. Imagine you have a box of toys, and you want to know what kinds of toys are inside. You could shake the box really hard and listen to the noises they make, or you could look inside the box and try to sort them out.

Scientists want to do the same thing, but they're looking for tiny particles that are too small to see. So they use the prolate trochoidal mass spectrometer to help them find out what's inside.

The prolate trochoidal mass spectrometer works by using magnets and electric fields to separate particles by how heavy they are. Just like some toys are heavier than others, some particles are heavier than others too.

Inside the prolate trochoidal mass spectrometer, the particles get pushed around in circles by the magnets and electric fields. As they go around and around, the heavy particles go slower and the light particles go faster.

Then, the particles hit a detector, which can tell the scientists how heavy each particle is. That way, they know exactly what kinds of particles are inside different materials.

So just like you can shake a box of toys or look inside to see what's in there, scientists can use the prolate trochoidal mass spectrometer to learn about the tiny particles inside different materials.