Candy Chromatography HELP NEEDED ASAP

[Lexxe15]

My project is on candy chromatography. My question for my experiment is "What dyes are used in the coatings of skittles?" I cannot think of a hypothesis for this experiment to answer my question and I could really use some help. I have already tried looking over the experiment and going to the science buddies page on how to write a hypothesis. Any ideas? Thank you for your help!

[deleted-71948]

Hi,
Welcome to Science Buddies!

If you haven't already done so, please check out the science buddies page on "Color Chromatography: What makes those colors?" This page gives you a full overview from the introduction to the experiment procedure.
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p006.shtml

If you have additional questions, please feel free to ask
-Grace

[deleted-93346]

In addition to Grace's reply, I can suggest a few hypotheses to get you thinking: All manufacturers use the same dyes to get the same colors. Multiple dyes are always used to achieve a given final color. Primary colors use single dyes. All colors are achieved with a single dye. Single dyes are used more often than multiple dyes.

Hope that helps.

[deleted-73970]

Hi, Lexxe15,

It is helpful to know that the seven main food colorings in the United States approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are FD&C Blue No. 1 (“Brilliant Blue” FCF, E133), FD&C Blue No. 2 (“Indigotine”, E132), FD&C Green No. 3 (“Fast Green” FCF, E143, the least used), FD&C Red No. 40 (“Allura Red” AC, E129), FD&C Red No. 3 (“Erythrosine”, E127), FD&C Yellow No. 5 (“Tartrazine”, E102), and FD&C Yellow No. 6 (“Sunset Yellow” FCF, E110), where FD&C stands for Food, Drug, and Cosmetics.

Chances are, Skittles has most of the above, if not all. And according to a Skittles wrapper, the food coloring for all candies in the original series (red, yellow, orange, green, and purple) includes Yellow 6 Lake, Red 40 Lake, Yellow 5 Lake, Blue 2 Lake, Yellow No. 5, Red No. 40, Yellow No. 6, Blue 1 Lake, and Blue No. 1. This information should help you create a hypothesis, although you might want to change the question a little bit. Perhaps you could ask which dye is most prominent or yields the largest Rf value (distance traveled by a band/distance traveled by the solvent) for a colored band on the chromatogram.

Hope this helped,
RM