Hurumanu - Chromatography Experiment

Keywords:

Chromatography

- Chroma means colour in Greek

- Graphy means a descriptive science

Pigments

- Pigments are substances/materials that give colours to objects or things

Aim: To separate the different pigments from ink using chromatography

Equipment:

• Felt tip pen
• Filter paper strips
• Test tube 
• Beaker
• Measuring cylinder
• Pencil

Hypothesis: 

I think that the colour on the paper will get smudge because of the water, the water moves the ink; it goes into any direction depending on where the water will go.

Method/Steps:

1. Draw a line 5cm from the bottom or measure it using two fingers.
2. Draw a coloured dot using a felt tip pen on where your fingers are.
3.  Measure out 10m of water and place it on a test tube/measure out 50ml of water on the breaker.
4.  Place the filter paper with the dot on it on the beaker fold it over to the side to make sure it holds on.
5.  Wait for 5 minutes to see the end result; to observe it.

Observation:

The colour became a little neon-ish, the coloured dot on the filter paper definitely smudges just as what I expected, the colour didn't change but two colours appeared on the paper, a lighter shade of pink and a light blue but is slightly visible. 

Conclusion:
My hypothesis was right, it did smudge but I didn't expect that there were going to be colours that are going to appear.

Discussion:
This experiment is about trying to separate pigments that make up the different felt pen colours


Why do pigments separate? 

It's because each pigment has a different solubility, which means some of them to move faster and further than others. And the darker the colours the more pigments there will be since it takes a lot of pigments to make one dark colour except primary colours.

Evaluation:

This experiment was successful, my hypothesis was right and it was very satisfying to watch the colours move and pigments to separate.
It would be nice if the paper we used was bigger.

Here are photos of our experiment, my buddy and I used different colours to observe the different pigments that were used to make these colours.