High pressure liquid chromatography column...it's a metal tube filled with shit that separates out different shit in a solution at different times...basically
More in depth...
You have a mobile phase...ours is reversed phase so it is a combination of Acetonitrile and water. This mobile phase gets pumped, under high pressure (around 1000psi) through the LC system that includes an autosampler, a pump, a column, and a UV spectrometer.
The autosampler is a motorized needle and a tray that withdraws and injects a certain amount of a prepared standard or sample into the LC machine.
The pump does just that...pumps the mobile phase with or without the sample/standard through the system
The column is a tube filled with different compounds that slow down the progress of the compounds in the standard or sample. Think of it as a tube filled with marbles. If you pour water through it, the water will eventually drain to the bottom. If you pour something more viscous, like oil, it will take a little longer because the substance is thicker than the water. If you try to pour something really viscous, like honey, it will take a lot longer because the substance is thicker than the oil. Molecules work the same way...some molecules are more attracted to the solid phase (the compound bonded into the inside of the column) than others. The ones that are less attracted to the column solid phase will work their way through the column faster than the compounds that are more attracted to the solid phase.
The UV Spectrometer reads when the compound makes it through the column. It detects the presence of the specific molecule by hitting it with a specific wavelength of light. The light interacts with the molecule, and the detector in the Spectrometer records this interaction.
The signal from the detector is then analyzed and sent to a recording software or to an integrator that prints out a chart.
The signals are represented as peaks. The location of the peak is the retention time of the specific molecule, and shows WHAT the molecule is. The area under the peak shows HOW MUCH of that molecule there is in the sample/standard.
The column we got is not separating the compounds we are looking at correctly, so we are waiting for another column that will (hopefully) separate them well enough to get some useable data so we can start analyzing the various polymers I have been making for the last 3 months