The composition of the suspicious powder may be composed of illicit drugs but nothing is guaranteed until confirmation. To do so, the analysis must be prompt and effective and thus a team of scientists at Harvard University has invented a technique that does exactly that. The simple technique, known as magneto-Archimedes levitation (MagLev), can tell apart common street drugs in dilute mixtures. Conclusions of the study involving MagLev were published in the journal Angewandte Chemie and propose that the technique may go beyond other drug identification methods, such as FTIR or Raman spectroscopy.
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