Which technique is nondestructive and commonly used to determine organic compound structure?

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is a powerful technique widely used to determine the structure of organic compounds while being nondestructive to the sample. In NMR, a sample is placed in a strong magnetic field and exposed to radiofrequency radiation, which causes certain nuclei (commonly hydrogen or carbon) to resonate. The resulting spectra provide valuable information about the environment of these nuclei, enabling chemists to deduce structural features such as the number of hydrogen atoms adjacent to a given atom, the types of functional groups present, and the overall connectivity of the molecule.

One of the key advantages of NMR is that it does not consume or destroy the sample being analyzed, allowing for further analysis if needed. This makes it particularly useful for characterizing complex organic molecules, where retaining the original sample may be important for additional tests or experiments.

In contrast, mass spectroscopy, while useful in identifying the mass and structure of molecular ions, is inherently a destructive method because the sample is ionized and fragmented during the process. Capillary electrophoresis is primarily a separation technique, not specifically aimed at determining molecular structure, and operates through the differences in migration rates of charged particles in an electric field. Therefore, mass spectroscopy and capillary electrophoresis do not