Paper Chromatography Lab

The purpose of this lab was to experiment with various ways to separate mixtures into its pure components. Depending on whether a mixture is homogeneous or heterogeneous, mixtures can be separated by physical means and their physical properties. In this lab, we used chromatography, which is a technique that uses the differences in physical properties and intermolecular forces of the components in a mixture to separate them. Although there are different forms of chromatography, they all have a stationary and mobile phase. The mobile phase moves through the stationary phase and carries the components of the mixture at different rates. In this lab, paper chromatography and column chromatography will be used.

In the paper chromatography, the paper

As a result, we were able to identify whether mixtures were comprised of one or more components. In the paper chromatography, a majority of the candy colors had more than one component. For example, the color brown had three visible components, meanwhile the color red only had one component. In regards to the Rf factors of each color, blue had the highest ratios and red had the lowest ratios. This leads me to assume that the colors with blue components have high ratios of blue, in comparison to the other components, that make up a majority of that specific color; the opposite assumption can be made for red due to its low ratio.

Moreover, in the column chromatography, the spinach extract had four changes in its color intensity, which indicates there were at least four components. As the hexane, acetone, isopropyl alcohol, and saturated sodium bicarbonate solutions passed through the sodium bicarbonate it varied in color intensity and flow rate; the flow rates decreased as we used the solutions in the order listed previously. This allowed for different components of the spinach extract to become absorbed by the sodium carbonate and ultimately separated