How does a mass spectrometer separate and find the percentage of nitrogen and carbon in a sample?

Question

What does a mass spectrometer do exactly and lamien terms please!

Answer 1

Mass spectrometry is an analytical technique that identifies the chemical composition of a compound or sample on the basis of the mass-to-charge ratio of charged particles.[1] The method employs chemical fragmentation of a sample into charged particles (ions) and measurements of two properties, charge and mass, of the resulting particles, the ratio of which is deduced by passing the particles through electric and magnetic fields in a mass spectrometer. The design of a mass spectrometer has three essential modules: an ion source, which transforms the molecules in a sample into ionized fragments; a mass analyzer, which sorts the ions by their masses by applying electric and magnetic fields; and a detector, which measures the value of some indicator quantity and thus provides data for calculating the abundances each ion fragment present. The technique has both qualitative and quantitative uses, such as identifying unknown compounds, determining the isotopic composition of elements in a compound, determining the structure of a compound by observing its fragmentation, quantifying the amount of a compound in a sample using carefully designed methods (e.g., by comparison with known quantities of heavy isotopes), studying the fundamentals of gas phase ion chemistry (the chemistry of ions and neutrals in vacuum), and determining other physical, chemical, or biological properties of compounds.

Answer 2

a mass spectrometer detects elements and their perentage by the time of their flight

ie because nitrogen is heavier than carbon it gets to the detector slower and so the first thing would be carbon to reach it

and i detects it