Paper Chromatography Essay

998 Words2 Pages

The purpose of this lab was to better understand the process of chromatography by separating different mixtures. In one experiment, students had to separate b-carotene and chlorophyll in spinach. In the seconds experiment, students were expected to separate the different colors or compounds within several dyes. In this second experiment, students not only took a paper chromatography of the different dyes, but also of the spinach juice. Furthermore, students also calculate the Rf values for the paper chromatography experiment; students collected the wavelengths of the two bands that were collected from the first experiment (separating separate b-carotene and chlorophyll in spinach). I hypothesized that we would be able to better separate the …show more content…

We took pictures of each other’s data once finished with the lab. For the paper chromatography, students began by grinding 5g of spinach along with 2g of anhydrous magnesium sulfate. Students added hexanes and acetone as specified by the lab protocols. Once, the solvent was a dark green color, we placed it in a centrifuge and transfer the liquid portion of the solution into a test tube. Throughout this portion of the experiment, students used weighting paper as a funnel poring the indicated solution as stated by the protocol, for instance pouring silica gel and sand into the column. After, we poured about 3ml of Hexanes into the column, making sure not to let the column dry. We then added, spinach extract to the column—after, we added about 1ml of hexanes. Adding hexanes caused the solution to gain a yellow colored band. We added hexanes until the yellow band reached the bottom of the column, thus began to collect all the yellow pigment into a test tube. Once the elutant become colorless, we once again placed a waste basket under it. Finally, we collected the green pigment into another test tube by a 70%/ 30% mixture and a bit of acetone. Once the two colored bands were collected, we obtained the wavelengths of each colored band using the …show more content…

We then placed several dots as specified by the lab protocols, for instance placing a pencil dot in from the edge. Then, using a capillary, we spotted the 3cm spot about five times with spinach extract, that was obtained in column chromatography. Students, the placed a spinach leaf on the paper, covering 7 and 10cm dots. Using a quarter, students rolled over the leaf from about the 7 to 10cm mark several times. We then rolled the paper into a cylinder and stapled it. Once the paper was placed in a beaker containing 30ml of 90/10 hexanes to acetone mixture, foil was placed on top. Once the solvent reached about 1cm from the top of the paper, we took it out and marked the solvent front and again outlined every spot. We again, measured the distance to the solvent front and to the center of each spot—and calculated the Rf values for each spot. The colors for each spot, for both this and the paper chromatography were

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