Chemical analysis is used to determine the qualitative or quantitative content of a given sample with the help of chemical and physical methods. Chemical analysis is part of our everyday life: everything we eat, drink or administer in any other way has probably at some point been analysed.
This goes beyond food stuffs and pharmaceuticals: the emission from smoke stacks and car exhausts are commonly analysed, as are the feed streams in chemical plants and evidence in forensic science to mention just a few examples. In these pages, some examples of different analytical methods such as Gas Chromatography, NMR, ICP, GC-MS, HPLC, FTIR and AAS are described.