Our group is focused on measuring thermodynamic information although we obtain kinetic and often dynamic information about chemical reactions as well. Using an instrument called a guided ion beam tandem mass spectrometer (GIBMS)/we examine how reactions of cations and molecules change as a function of the available kinetic (sometimes electronic) energy. When the reaction is endothermic (requiring extra energy)/we can measure a threshold for the process/which directly provides the thermodynamic information of interest. We have applied this technique to a range of systems/simple atom + diatom reactions (most recently of lanthanide and actinide elements)/hydration of metal ions/up to fragmentation of small biomolecules.