In The Lab...

I'm no "Doc" Brown, but I'm doing my best to make this year's study of chemistry live up to Gunnar's mad scientist expectations.  At the very least we're doing lots of experiments, though I cruelly force him to keep a notebook where he writes up the experiments as well as definitions of key science terms and concepts (because I'd like him to be smarter than these guys) and sketches the occasional diagram or model.

For this week, we're talking about mixtures and how they can be "un-mixed".  For instance, is it possible to extract the apple-smelling part out of apple cider vinegar?

We've got some distilled vinegar and some cider vinegar in a warm-ish, sunny place to let evaporation take its course, and we'll see what happens.

We've also collected several colors of leaves and extracted the pigments (chlorophyll and more) from them.  I didn't get a picture of Gunnar - looking very officially "science-y" - using the mortar and pestle to grind the leaves to a pulp in some rubbing alcohol.

And it's really too bad you couldn't hear his unceasing commentary about how much he hates the smell of rubbing alcohol, because that really contributed a lot to the professional feel of the whole experience.  Sheesh.

But he particularly enjoyed setting up this contraption to suspend the filter paper so it would hang down into the jars of leaf pulp.

That took some fidgeting, to get the notebooks to stand up just at the right height.

But... success!

You can try it yourself quite easily,

and you don't need fancy chromatography paper -

an ordinary coffee filter will do just fine.

We let it sit overnight and then dried the strips of filter paper

and taped them into his notebook when I

(gasp! oh the horror!) made him write it up.

He always hopes I'll forget.

So I make him a deal:

If we do more than one experiment a day,

he only has to write up the best one.

Aren't I nice? ;D