The purpose of this lab was to separate dyes in Kool-Aid mix from its other ingredients using chromotography. After the experiment we concluded that resolution of the mixture in the first trial was 3.44 and in the second trial it was 1.688, meaning that the average of these two trials ended up being 2.56. The data showed that that the greater the resolution, the better the column separated the substances. In the first trial we had a very high resolution meaning that the column separated the components fairly well. In the second trial however, the case was different and the resolution was lower. One of the errors that may have occurred in this instance was that the mixture was flushed too rapidly into the sep-pack, which did not allow all of the components to be broken down in the isopropanol. This is a common error that occurs when one does not pay attention to the rate that the mixture passes through the sep-pak.

We also determined that the most polar was the red dye because it was easily separated from the mixture and the most polar was the blue dye because it was the last one to leave the sep-pak. It is important to remember that the more polar a molecule is, the less it is bound to the C18-coated surface. When we calculated the average, it turned out that the error from the second trial caused a major difference in the resolution obtained and it did not effectively show that the components were separated from the Kool-Aid. When I was reading the instructions, I become confused because of some of the terms that were written with little explanation. The calculations were easy to interpret but I would definitely explain a little more about the lab and the importance of chromatography.