Ingredients
- Tube of Smarties
- Blotting or filter paper
Recipe
Place a smartie in the center of a circle of blotting paperSlowly drip water onto the smartie until a 5 cm wet patch surrounds it
Leave until all the components of the dye have separated
Eat the now white and soggy smartie
In
lots of cases, a dye is made up of several different colors all
mixed together. Chromatography is a really clever method used
to separate the components of a sometimes complex mixture. In
this experiment we used paper chromatography. You will have noticed
that the wet area on the paper spread and got bigger throughout
the experiment - this is due to capillary action pulling the water
through the pores in the filter paper. The dye molecules are divided
between the solid phase (the paper) and the liquid phase (the
water). Depending on their size and solubility they will travel
with the water faster or slower through the paper and will therefore
travel different distances during the experiment. You can try
the same experiment with ink and could even try other colored
substances although I'm not promising that this will work as well
as the smarties!
