Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello, I am doing the antioxidity project and I need help to see if this idea would actually work because I kind of tweaked it from another website I saw. So the idea is to have 4 different vitamins A,B,C, and E and put them in different glass beakers of saline solution, efferdent tablets, and blue food coloring. What I am hoping to happen is that, for example if you have vitamin A in a glass beaker with the items listed above the more antioxidity it has the more blue coloring will be left. Again I’m not entirely sure if it would work because the website said they tested it using only vitamin c and their control. Sorry if I put this in the wrong section, but thank you!

Hi AayatiP,

I'm not familiar with the experiment you've outlined. Could you post some more specific information or perhaps a reference about the reaction between any of the vitamins and the food coloring?

Some chemical compounds (and some vitamins) can inhibit oxidation reactions. Such compounds are “antioxidants”. For example, the following link describes an experiment using oxidation processes in apples to assess antioxidant activity of vitamins C:

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/eve ... teps/22334

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

A. Norman

Sorry, I should have posted the website I found the experiment that I want to do.

https://www.omicsonline.org/measurement ... ?aid=12411

You can copy and paste the url into the search bar and it will take you to the website. The experiment is under the heading Materials and Methods. So basically what they only tested Vitamin C. I was wondering if I could do the same method just with other vitamins too. Thanks for your help. I checked out your website and it also helped.

Hi AayatiP,

The test procedure described in the reference you posted can be used to test antioxidants other than vitamin C. In fact the study lists test results for several sweeteners, fruits, beverages and nutraceuticals.
The authors chose to reference the antioxidant activity of these items to that of vitamin C.

You should be able to use this test for water soluble vitamins (C and any of the B complex vitamins). Vitamins A and E are not soluble in water. A negative test for antioxidant activity (oxidation of the blue dye) could result from insufficient amounts of these vitamins being dissolved in the test solutions. Thus this test may not be workable for water insoluble vitamins.

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

A. Norman