Chromatography Lab
To increase students' awareness of possible invisible pollutants in drinking water sources, students perform an exciting lab requiring them to think about how solutions and mixtures exist even in unsuspecting places such as ink. They use alcohol and chromatography paper to separate the components of black and colored marker ink. Students witness first-hand how components of a solution can be separated, even when those individual components are not visible in solution.
Environmental engineers use separation methods to remove pollutants from drinking water sources. The ink chromatography method separates components that may not visible in the original ink sample.Copyright 2004 Natrij, Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TLC_black_ink.jpg
A firm understanding of solutions and mixtures and their components is essential for environmental engineers whose challenge is to prepare solutions to monitor and test groundwater for contaminants, and to develop remediation processes that separate pollutants from their water solutions.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Describe how chromatography works and what happens during this process to black or colored ink.
- Explain why being able to separate solutions into their components is important to environmental engineering and water quality.