Purpose The goal of this experiment conducted in lab, is to separate and identify the pigments that are found in different plants. Through this experiment, we have a variety of pigments present in plants. Plants absorb light in order to carry out photosynthesis. This light is absorbed by chloroplasts in plant cells. Through photosynthesis, plants synthesize their own food. Paper chromatography is normally used to separate mixtures of different molecules since capillary actions happens and allows the molecules of each pigment to attract one another and to the paper making the pigments move up the paper. This experiment is great technique to separate complex mixtures. There are a majority of different types of components in plant pigments, and they became clearly visible during this …show more content…
We know that Chlorophyll is more of a dominant pigment in green plants, in which hides the color of the Carotenes and Xanthophyll among the leaves. In this lab, we can easily separate these different pigments, through chromatography. What this does it separates mixtures in a liquid into individual components. The technique is based on the fact that each substance in a mixture has a specific affinity for a solid surface and a specific solubility in different solvents. By this method, the solid surface is the cellulose fibers in the chromatography paper, and the solvent is the solution that was placed in the bottom of the developing chamber. In this experiment, chromatography was used to separate pigments extracted from spinach and purple plants. For my hypothesis, I believe that the pigments will travel up the paper producing four different type of shades of color. Also, there will be a certain height the pigments will stop rising. Also, water soluble solvent will only be present making only water-soluble pigments rise up the chromatography