Difference Between Skittles And Chromatography

Methods We began this experiment by laying out the needed materials to find the chromatography of Skittles Sweets and Sours and Crayola markers. Using a ruler and a pencil, a line was drawn on all thirty chromatography strips 1.5 centimeters from the bottom of the paper. This was to ensure that the starting point for each chromatography process was consistent. The chromatography of the skittles was found first. We began by pouring water into a cup. A pipette was used to transfer fifteen single drops of water from the cup onto a paper plate. The drops were spaced out onto the plate so that they would not touch one another. Then, five blue skittles, five orange skittles, and five green skittles were retrieved from a box of Skittles Sweets …show more content…
If a dye is more soluble in the solvent, it will rise farther up the paper through capillary action. The solubility of identical dyes is always the same when exposed to the same solvent. Because of this, Rf values of identical dyes are always the same (Davis et al, 2009). This means that if the dyes used in Skittles Sweets and Sours and Crayola markers of the same color were identical, their Rf values would have to be nearly the same. We calculated five Rf values for each dye that was found after performing the chromatography. The Rf values for the dyes of the blue Skittles are .498, .488, .542, .526, and .441. The statistics for these numbers are .499 for the mean, .498 for the median, no mode, .0389 for the standard deviation, and .499 ± .0389 for the best answer. The Rf values for the dyes of the green skittles are .621, .455, .628, .590, and .397. The statistics for these numbers are .538 for the mean, .590 for the median, no mode, .105 for the standard deviation, and .538 ± .105 for the best answer. The Rf values for the dyes of the orange Skittles are .284, .271, .321, .275, .222. The statistics for these numbers are .275 for the mean, .275 for the median, no mode, .0354 for the standard deviation, and .275 ± .0354 for the best answer. The Rf values for the blue dye used in the blue Crayola marker are .982, 1.00, 1.00, .981, and 1.00. The statistics for these numbers are …show more content…
The Rf values for the green dye used in the green Crayola marker are .958, 1.00, .970, .970, and .990. The statistics for these numbers are .978 for the mean, .970 for the median, .970 for the mode, .0170 for the standard deviation, and .978 ± .0170 for the best answer. Finally, the Rf values for the dye used in the orange Crayola marker are .931, .918, .961, .899, and .969. The statistics for these numbers are .936 for the mean, .931 for the median, no mode, .0293 for the standard deviation, and .936 ± .0293 for the best answer. Overall, the statistics for the Rf values of the dyes used in Crayola markers significantly vary from the statistics of the dyes used in the Skittles of the same color. Since Rf values of identical dyes stay the same, this would mean that the Rf values of the marker dyes and Skittle dyes of the same color would have to be extremely similar in order to be the same dye; however, the numbers that we found were extremely different from one another. The overall trend seemed to be that the mean, median, and mode of the Rf values for the Skittle dyes were significantly lower than their marker counterparts. However, the standard deviation for the Rf values of the Skittle dyes were higher in number than their marker counterparts. This variation proves our hypothesis that the dyes used in Skittles Sweets and Sours are in fact different than the dyes used in Crayola markers. Since the dyes used in markers are different