Lab 2A: Chromatography

(Fig. 1, my favorite paper chromatogram produced during this lab)

1. It is important that the wick and not the paper circle touches the water. The reason why this is important is because chromatography is a method of examining different components of a mixture when the components are too similar to observe without separation. So, because you have to be able to observe these different components, putting the circle straight into the water will likely result in not all of the components in the ink being visible.

2. Some of the things that affect the pattern of the colors on the paper are the brand of marker, the ink used, and the components in the ink.

3. Each ink separates into different segments because they are made with some different components. For example, with the larger ray of color on the chromatogram, the ink was black. However, there were also secondary components of the ink. So, these secondary colors are able to be seen through this method of chromatography, resulting in different colored pigment bands.

4. In all of the chromatograms that the class made, I noticed that there were a lot of light blue shadings on most of them. Since we only used black markers, the compound of the components was always the same, even though they were made by different companies. Despite the fact that we used different branded markers, it's likely that the companies used some of the same components when making their markers, so as a result, any same component in different markers will result in the same color showing up when doing chromatography.

5. Water soluble markers were used in this exercise because when they come into contact with the water, they show their components (via colors), whereas permanent markers wouldn't be able to work using water because they aren't water soluble. If one wanted to see the components that make up a permanent marker, a solvent that wasn't water would have to be used.