I had a chromatography experiment for chemistry and here is one of the questions:
Did the compounds travel farther in the water or the isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol)? Explain why you think that this is the case.
Now, the compounds traveled the farthest in the water but I don't know why (I used crayola markers). I thought it would be the alcohol because of the fumes. I'm trying to research about it but I'm not getting anything. Can somebody help me with an explanation for this?
But so far, what I have is that since Crayola markers use mostly dye and WATER, maybe the water molecules had absorbed into the paper a lot easier.
This could be totally wrong:/
1 answer
I assume from the last part of your post that you are using paper chromatography. If so,the paper is the stationary phase and the solvent is the mobile phase. Compounds that are very soluble in the mobile phase (in this case I think you used different solvent), they will move up the paper farther than compounds that are not very soluble. You can Google paper chromatography and read more about it there.