This is just one example of the many visual representations I’ve created to illustrate Audible NMR. It is totally normal for analytical scientists to acquire 1H NMR spectra that look like the one shown here, though I’ve colored the NMR peaks and normal spectra just use a black line. The standard way of representing such a spectrum is to describe its horizontal axis in units of “parts-per-million” (ppm), which is convenient for reasons explained thoroughly in basics NMR descriptions. I’ve replotted this spectrum in units of KHz to make the connection between these signals and audio frequencies (roughly 0.1 - 20 KHz). I’ve also mapped each nuclear resonance to a key on a standard 88-key keyboard (with additional keys in gray at the right to accommodate higher frequencies), and translated them into musical notes, plotted on a standard scale. The colors string together the connections of individual resonances in the spectrum, with their corresponding atoms, with their corresponding keys, and their corresponding notes.

Thus we enter a realm where molecules are described by music, where visual data become audible, and where these tiny tiny bits of stuff become tangible through the power of analytical chemistry.