Spinach Leaf Chromatography Lab Report

The purpose of the Spinach Leaf Chromatography Lab was to determine how much chlorophyll a, b and carotenes and xanthophylls the Spinach leaf contained through measuring the distance traveled by the pigments. The hypothesis the group created was that a spinach leaf contained multiple pigments. The group after doing the chromatography of the spinach leaf then determined the rate or flow of migration using Rf(Distance pigment traveled/ distances solvent

2. Materials and Methods

A 2x15 strip of chromatography paper was cut so that it would fit inside the test tube. Then a point was cut in the bottom 0.5 cm of the strip. A faint pencil line was then drawn across the strip about 1cm above the point. A thumb tack was then used attach the paper strip to the cork and then the stopper the test tube to allow the paper strip to hang inside the tube with the point down. The strip was not allowed to touch the test tube edges. Spinach was then torn into small pieces and place in a mortar and pestle. After 5 ml of ethyl alcohol were to the leaf pieces they were pestle until they were finally ground. Using a Pasteur Pipet a small drop of pigment extract was added to the center of the pencil line on the paper. The 1.5 ml of the chromatography solvent was poured into the test tube. The paper and

Pigments of other substances can be analyzed using paper chromatography. For example the ink of a pen contains many different pigments. These pigments have different characteristics such as molecule size and solubility. As a result of their different characteristics, each molecule travels at a different speed when pulled on the piece of paper. The lighter particle move rapidly and a greater distance than the other particles. As a result all the pigments in the ink sample will spread out. This same process occurred during the chromatography of the spinach