Sorry, I didn't see this.
Actually you have only one mixture; it happens to have two components. There is a more or less standard procedure for separating complete unknowns (that's where you know nothing about it) and if you know nothing about it that is where you start. You have either had such a procedure already or you will be given one soon. Or consult a standard organic qualitative analysis book to see how to do it. I doubt, at the level you are, that anyone would expect you to go through the entire procedure. I'll bet that you will be give some directions as well as some glimmer of information that will help you determione what to do. I also expect you will be given more than enough sample to allow you to run a number of tests. I know I've talked in general terms, only, but with nothing more to go on, that's about the best I can do.
The thing is that we are expected to come up with the whole procedure ourselves, and present that for approval. We haven't had any separation techniques except in organic (involving distillation), and this is an instrumental lab class. We have always been given pure samples that are not mixed, to work with. We are also advised to give ourselves 3 months to do the whole thing. What I described before with knowing the sample identity in a mix and finding the concentrations through UV Spec, and HPLC is the only thing that we have learned recently.
The thing is that we mostly work with instruments and solution preparation now and not really what I did in Quant, with the whole full scale reaction experiments. It's an odd situation there, especially since there's no set up for recrystalization or filtering and etc. Where I am now, we just mostly rely on instruments to determine unknown identities, which is why I am confused here.
I guess I'll just have to find an organic quantative anaylsis book and somehow come up with a proposal. I guess the Skoog book isn't adequate for this sort of situation. Or I just hope I get an unknown with one compound in it, but how would I know that, if the powder could be white for both compounds? (and mixed)
Thanks for giving me a direction to head in, Dr.Bob.