Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My grandaughter needs help, her project is due April 3, 2009. What is paper chromatography, and what category does it fall under? She likes Earth/Space but we are not sure if paper chromatography falls in that category. It seems like an interesting subject but there some terms we have not heard of such as Rf value and how to measure it. Thank you for the help.

Hi bigmamma6,
Welcome to the ask an expert forums. Have you seen our project on paper chromatography?
http://www.sciencebuddies.com/science-f ... 4&from=TSW
This is in the Chemistry section of our project ideas. There is a procedure there to estimate the Rf value for inks. The Rf value can be defined as the distance the solvent travels divided by the distance the compound travels. There are explanations and some example calculations on this page:
http://www.800mainstreet.com/e3/e3.html
(about 1/4 of the way down the page).
Please let us know if you have any other questions.
Chris

Hi!
Here are some other links which may be helpful as well-
http://www.chemguide.co.uk/analysis/chr ... paper.html
http://home.earthlink.net/~dayvdanls/ph ... tolab7.htm
http://www.geocities.com/tjachem/chroma.html
Best of luck!

Hello ChrisG,
We have looked at the project. Thank you for your help with the category, and the explanation of Rf value and where to find the procedure to estimate the Rf value for inks. Also thanks for the page with example calculations.

Hello stary113,
Thank you for some other links, I am sure they will be helpful as well.

Bigmamma6

Hi!
You're very welcome, that sounds great! Feel free to post back with any more questions, good luck!