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Anonymous asked: 'Hint: If you’re looking for a drug in sugar, a microscope is NOT the correct equipment.' -- What would be? (I really am curious)

A mass spectrometer would be the most useful item. It’s a device that breaks all the molecules present in a sample into little fragments and detects the mass of each one, then spits out a report with peaks for all the pieces. The biggest piece is the whole molecule. For a substance that (mostly) homogenous, like table sugar, we’d expect one big peak at 342.3 grams/mole, which is the molecular weight of sucrose. If another substance is present, like a MYSTERY NARCOTIC, you’d get a second peak with a different molecular weight, which can then be used to identify the substance.

Alternatively if you want to be more thorough, you can extract the sugar and pull the MYSTERY NARCOTIC out, and analyze it by itself. But the mass spec is literally done by “dissolve sample, inject into machine” and it takes about five seconds. But it’s not very photogenic. A mass spec machine is just a boring-looking box thing.

You cannot SEE a drug contaminating sugar through a microscope. All you’ll see is sugar crystals.

22 February 2012 ·