What does the following mean:
"Methanol was first used as a blank to get the background of the spectrum for the FT - IR spectroscopy"? What do we have to bank to get the background?

Question

What does the following mean:
"Methanol was first used as a blank to get the background of the spectrum for the FT - IR spectroscopy"? What do we have to bank to get the background?

anonymous · Answer

Methanol is probably being used as the solvent and when you're analyzing your product, you don't want to worry about the light waves that are absorbed by the methanol, only the product. It just makes the spectrum more complicated. So to solve this problem, you put methanol in as a blank and set the absorbance to 0, then when you put the methanol with the product in, you only get the absorbance levels for the product!

kayne · Answer

Thanks for enlightening me on this particular issue @BluFoot.