13C NMR spectroscopy provides structural and functional details of compounds by showing the different magnetic environments of carbon atoms. It measures the energy difference between spin states of carbon-13 nuclei, which appears as peaks in the spectrum in parts per million (ppm). The number of peaks corresponds to the number of different carbon environments in a molecule. Chemical shifts are influenced by the electronegativity of bonded atoms, with more electronegative atoms causing peaks to appear at higher ppm due to increased deshielding of the carbon nucleus.