Tannic Acid

[ginny_gaz]

I read somewhere that we can determine the content of Tannic Acid in Tea.
I have to submit my project in a week ie on 12th of November 2007. Can someone please help me over here??

[Louise]

I read somewhere that we can determine the content of Tannic Acid in Tea.

Where did you read this? What procedures did they use? Tannins are a whole bunch of different types of chemicals. I'm not sure if tea has tannic acid or just other tannins.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannin

I did a search, and all the methods I found required chemicals and lab equipment you are unlikely to have.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w74074236r024518/

Some one studied anti-oxidants in tea last year, but it took several months of experiments to get the project to work. I would guess even if you has access to a spectrophotometer (the instrument used to measure the amount of tannins in the paper above), your teacher would have to order the chemicals for you, and you probably wouldn't get them in time.

Why don't you look at the science fair idea list and see if there is something else that looks interesting to you.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentorin ... deas.shtml

I have to submit my project in a week ie on 12th of November 2007. Can someone please help me over here??

What exactly is your project? What you've posted here isn't a project, but just a question about a method. Do you have a hypothesis?

You can look at the science fair quide for information on science fair projects and how to develop a hypothesis.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentorin ... ndex.shtml

One last thing, it generally takes 12-36 hours to get a response in the forums, even if your project is due soon, since the experts (and students) are in all different time zones.

Good luck!
Louise

[barretttomlinson]

Wikipedia has an article on tannic acid that references the following link:

http://www.users.muohio.edu/hagermae/tannin.pdf

It has several methods for analyzing for tannins and tannic acid, the most interesting of which may be protein precipitation. Any of these methods may require adult help to procure the chemicals and supervise the experiments. It will be difficult to execute a project like this in a week unless you can find someone who already has the chemicals on hand, so I concur with Louise that it might be wise to rethink your project.

This is an interesting and important question however. I wish you success in whatever you decide to do!