Simple Paper Chromatography

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yayapizza
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2016 4:20 pm
Occupation: Student

Simple Paper Chromatography

Post by yayapizza »

I'm measuring the retention factors of the pigments of 3 different types of red flowers in order to find out if they have similar pigments.

Flower #1 :0.84
Flower #2 :1.0
Flower #3 :0.68

are they similar enough to be the same pigments? The colors on the strips are different so I don't think so.
Pls help, reply ASAP, and thank in advance to anyone who answers.

P.S. The results of my experiment depend on this answer. Please be right.
norman40
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Occupation: retired chemist
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Re: Simple Paper Chromatography

Post by norman40 »

Hi yayapizza,

I’m assuming that you are working on the project described here:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p035.shtml

The retention factors you posted might be different from one another. You could conclude that the factors are different if you had multiple test results that were very consistent for each of the flowers you tested. Did you complete multiple trials to find the retention factor for each flower? How consistent were the data for the multiple trials?

If the colors you observed were consistently different and the retention factors were consistently different you could conclude that the pigments in the flowers were different.

I hope this helps. Please post again if you have more questions.

A. Norman
yayapizza
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2016 4:20 pm
Occupation: Student

Re: Simple Paper Chromatography

Post by yayapizza »

You see, this is where I get confused. The colors were similar. In my rose i saw a magenta/purple and a pale yellow. in my gerbera daisy I saw a red brown, brown, and yellow. In my carnation I saw pink and faint yellow.

From what you know aside from this project, do red flowers have the same or different pigments? This answer may help.

I have written this in my conclusion:

"I accept my hypothesis that the three types of flowers will consist of similarly colored pigments, and that these colors will be visible in a pattern on the filter paper. It turned out, that the pigments of the petals in all the flowers are fairly similar. However, I observed a closer similarity in the roses and carnations. I came to this conclusion by comparing the Rf of the two flowers."

I am not sure if this is correct. :?
yayapizza
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Oct 31, 2016 4:20 pm
Occupation: Student

Re: Simple Paper Chromatography

Post by yayapizza »

i did do 5 trials for each flower:



R1
0.7
R2
0.8
R3
0.9
R4
0.9
R5
0.9
G1
0.9
G2
0.8
G3
1.0
G4
1.0
G5
1.3
C1
0.7
C2
0.8
C3
0.6
C4
0.8
C5
0.5
norman40
Former Expert
Posts: 1022
Joined: Mon Jul 14, 2014 1:49 pm
Occupation: retired chemist
Project Question: Volunteer
Project Due Date: n/a
Project Status: Not applicable

Re: Simple Paper Chromatography

Post by norman40 »

Hi yayapizza,

Glad to see that you repeated your retention factor trials – great job!

Although the means for your data groups have different values there is some variation of the data within the groups. So there is a possibility that the different values for the means occurred by chance instead of a real difference in pigments in the flowers.

A “t-test” is commonly used to find out if differences in means for groups of data are likely to be due to chance. The “t-test” involves a series of statistical calculations to estimate the likelihood that the difference in means of two data groups is different from zero.

You can use an online calculator for t-tests of your data. The one at the following link provides some explanation of the process and details about the calculations.

http://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing/t-test.html

And there is additional information about t-tests here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student's_t-test

Please note that the t-test is performed with pairs of data groups. You should use the t-test to compare data for flower #1 with data for flower #2. Then flower #1 with flower #3 and flower #2 with flower #3. So you’ll end up with 3 t-tests.

I hope this helps. Please post again if you have more questions.

A. Norman
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