Chromatography Flowers

Chromatography is such a fun lab technique & it's one that is still used in labs today.  When I was a scientist, I used this technique in my biochemistry lab to separate proteins out of mixtures. Now that I'm a science teacher,  I like to do this lab with my students to introduce them to the scientific method. I always tell my kids that scientists perform chromatography to separate mixtures & now they will too! But we will do it in a much safer way - instead of silica-coated glass & organic solvents, we'll use markers & water.  Black markers are mixtures of many different colored inks & usually produce the best chromatographic results:

I use Mr. Sketch markers but any marker will work as long as it's not a permanent marker. I use laboratory qualitative-grade filter paper but this technique will work with coffee filters or even paper towels cut into circles. In the above example, we put black dots around a penny (as a guide), placed the disc on a small beaker to elevate it, added some drops of water to the center and watched as the dyes separated out of the mixture! Here are the results from the black marker. You can see the mixture is actually made up of at least 5 dyes: turquoise, red, pink, orange, yellow:

We cut the resulting chromatographic patterns into shapes and added stems & leaves. These are the results of brown, pink and green markers:

I have a fun solve-the-mystery-using-science lab in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  I do this mystery lab every year &  I'm sure you know - kids LOVE when they are challenged to solve a mystery! Really gets their minds working. I have done this with 2nd, 3rd, 4th & 5th graders - it's always a big hit! In this lab, students use paper chromatography along with chemistry experiments to solve the mystery "Who Sent the Cake?"! Click here to see it in my TpT store:

Happy Weekend!