Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

We did the experiment and have the data.
I'm trying to determine how to graph the data to to compare different chromatography substrates and solvents to see which combination performs best for separating ink components. I'm supposing the best combination would be the one resulting in the most colors? Please help. Thank You.

Hi honeybees100,

I understand that you're working on the project described here:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... -version-1

I'm assuming that you've calculated Rf values for each ink component, substrate, and solvent. One option would be to use a grid of charts, where each chart on the same row uses the same substrate, and each chart on the same column uses the same solvent. Then, each chart could show the Rf values for different ink components.

A natural way to quantify the ink separation would be to compare Rf values between different colors. If two (out of many) ink components were particularly important, you could focus on the difference between their Rf values.

An interesting follow up question would be to understand why certain substrate-solvent combinations are effective.

I hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.

Best,
Charles