Oh, I was not aware that they don't start at the same center. This is rather unusual though given the picture outlined in Cutnell's physics book of a mass spectrometer. When the ions enter the B-field they enter from the same spot and thus appear as though they are initiating travel from the...
I understand that they travel half a circle, where some of the ions pass into a detector while other ions may travel an outer path and miss the detector.
Instead, could you perhaps shed some light on what exactly I'm doing wrong mathematically?
I assumed that if you subract that radius...
Homework Statement
Two isotopes of carbon, carbon-12 and carbon-13, have masses of 19.93x10^-27 kg and 21.59x10^-27 kg, respectively. These two isotopes are singly ionized (+e) and each is given a speed of 6.667x10^5 m/s. The ions then enter the bending region of a mass spectrometer where the...