2: Chalk chromatography

Felix looks into a microscope

Hello!

Colorful chocolate lentils look great! Have you ever examined the dyes in sweets like these under a magnifying glass? You can try this with paper chromatography, as in the first chapter. (Paper is the “stationary phase” here, as explained in 1d.) Chalk chromatography is also very exciting, where the dyes contained in the colored coating of chocolate lentils are examined for their composition using chalk as the “stationary phase.”

If you’ve ever held chocolate lentils for too long, you’ll have noticed that the color comes off.

We’ll use this to our advantage for this experiment! The dyes from the coatings are dissolved in the eluent water (“mobile phase”).

This is what you need to conduct the experiment:

The instructions will show you how to use the dyes from the coating for the chromatography experiment:

Instructions Chromatography with Chalk
Experiment Log Chromatography with Chalk

You can also open and download the instructions and the experiment log for the experiment.

Have fun with the experiment! You can share your results with others in the community.

Continue to the blog post
Continue with 2a: Evaluation of Chalk Chromatography
Back to Mission Overview