Jeffrey M. Perkel

Jeffrey M. Perkel

Jeffrey Perkel has been a scientific writer and editor since 2000, and is a member of the National Association of Science Writers and the Association of Health Care Journalists. He holds a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania, and did postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard Medical School. Jeffrey Perkel's writing appears in several publications such as Nature, Nature Methods, Science, and Scientific American Online and he specializes in writing about laboratory technologies and methods.

Articles by Jeffrey M. Perkel

  • Purchasing Guide to Microplate Readers

    Friday, December 14, 2012
    Some pieces of laboratory hardware are ubiquitous. Pipettors are one example, and microcentrifuges another. Then there are microplate readers. read more

  • X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) Analyzers

    Thursday, July 01, 2010
    In XRF, when an x-ray beam is directed at a sample, it dislodges electrons in the inner orbitals of the atoms that comprise it. Because that ionized state is so unstable, lower-energy electrons from outer electron shells (that is, farther from the nucleus) rapidly collapse to fill the gap, releasing... read more

  • Raman Spectroscopy

    Monday, April 19, 2010
    Raman spectroscopy uses laser energy to molecularly "fingerprint" materials nondestructively and without contact. As a result, the technique is finding use in fields as diverse as homeland security, biomedicine, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and materials science. read more

  • HPLC Detectors

    Wednesday, December 23, 2009
    In the world of chromatography, separation is only half the battle. The other half: detecting what's coming off the column. After all, what good is separation if you cannot tell it occurred? To paraphrase the classic riddle, if a compound emerges from a c read more

  • GC and Environmental Testing

    Thursday, November 12, 2009
    Though the term may evoke tree-huggers and spotted owl enthusiasts, environmental science is actually a surprisingly broad chemistry sub-discipline. It involves testing a diverse array of matrices—earth, air, and water—for highly divergent classes of comp read more

  • Mass Spectrometry Mass Analyzers

    Tuesday, September 22, 2009
    Whatever their configuration, mass spectrometers comprise three basic components: an ionization source, a mass analyzer, and a detector. The ionization source, as its name implies, produces the charged molecules that can be seen by the detector; the mass read more

  • Mass Spectrometry Ionization Sources

    Saturday, August 15, 2009
    Whatever their configuration, mass spectrometers comprise two basic components: an ionization source and a mass analyzer. The former, as its name implies, ionizes molecules; the latter measures their mass—or more accurately, their mass-to-charge (m/z) rat read more

  • Particle Size Analysis

    Thursday, July 02, 2009
    Have you ever dug into an old pint of ice cream from the back of the freezer, only to find that your mint chocolate chip has morphed from smooth and creamy to icy and granular? Both are ice and cream, yet nobody would call the latter preferable. It's a ma read more

  • Spectrophotometers

    Friday, June 05, 2009
    Turn on your kitchen sink. Is the water fit to drink? One way to make that determination is with your eyes. Is it turbid? Colored? The optical properties of the water can help you decide. Researchers in fields from biology and chemistry to materials scie read more
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