- [Instructor] So let's say that I have a vial
of some mystery liquid right over here,
and I want to start figuring out what's going on there.
And the first step is to think about,
is it just one substance
or is it a mixture of multiple substances?
And the focus of this video is a technique
to separate out the substances
to understand at least how many there are,
and this technique generally is called chromatography,
but we'll focus on thin layer chromatography
which is the most common that you might see,
but other variations of chromatography
like paper chromatography
operate on very similar principles.
So what we're going to do is set up
on top of something like glass or plastic,
we're going to put a thin layer of a solid polar substance.
Now, what you typically do
is put a thin layer of silica gel,
that's the most common solid polar substance that folks use.
And it's also porous.
And the fact that it's porous is really important
because we're going to want liquid to have capillary action
and travel up through it.
Now, the silica gel, as I mentioned,
this thing is very polar.
Now, what we're going to do
is take some of our mystery substance,
let's say it's this color right over here,
and we're going to place a dot of it on that silica gel.
You then want to take this plate
that has the silica gel on it
and that little dot of our mystery substance,
and then you want to dip just one end of it in a solution.
And what's really important is that
the solution is less polar than the silica gel.
Less polar here.
And we'll talk a little bit about what happens
depending on how polar this is.
Now, usually this is going to be a very shallow amount
of this solution, which, as we'll see,
will be something of a solvent.
And you usually want to put it in a closed container
like this
so that this fluid down here doesn't evaporate out.
And then what do you think is going to happen?
Well, as I mentioned, this is a porous substance here.
And so you're going to have capillary action.
This fluid at the bottom is going to move upwards
through the silica gel,
through those little pores in the silica gel.
This is the stationary phase. Why do we call it that?
Well, 'cause it's not moving.
And you can imagine we would call this less polar solvent
the mobile phase,
because that is traveling through the silica gel
and it's picking up some of this mystery substance
and it's transporting it.
And let's say this mystery substance
is made up of two different things.
If something is more polar,
that means it's going to be more attracted
to the stationary phase which is very polar.
And so it's not going to travel that far,
while the parts of our mystery substance
that are less polar,
they're not going to be attracted to the silica gel as much.
So they're going to travel further with the solvent.
So maybe it might go like that.
And you would run this until your mobile phase
makes a good way to the top of your silica gel
right over here.
Now, just looking at this,
and the reason why it was called chromatography is
when they originally did this,
they were actually separating out various tissues
in vegetation that had different colors.
The chroma is referring to the various colors,
but it doesn't necessarily even have to refer to things
that have different colors
or sometimes you might need a UV light to see them.
But when you run thin layer chromatography,
you will see that your original dot will have traveled
to various degrees with your solvent
and then will now be multiple dots
depending on how many things were in your original mixture.
And as I just mentioned, this thing right over here,
this is the less polar thing is going to travel further
than the more polar thing, more polar constituent substance,
because the more polar thing is more attractive
to the silica gel, which is stationary,
and there is a way to quantify how far these things traveled
relative to your solvent.
And that's called a retention factor.
Retention factor.
Which the shorthand is R subscript f.
And it's just defined as the distance traveled
by the solute divided by the distance traveled
by the solvent.
And we need to be clear.
It's not the distance traveled by the solvent in total,
it's the distance traveled by the solvent from this origin,
from where we applied this dot right over here.
So, past the origin.
And let me label that as the origin.
So what would it be in this situation?
Well, to help us there, we would have to get out a ruler.
So the retention factor for substance A right over here,
so I'll put that dot there, label that A,
would be equal to the distance traveled by the solute,
which we can see, it traveled one centimeter,
one centimeter,
over the distance traveled by the solvent past the origin.
And so that is going to be,
we see it traveled five centimeters past the origin.
So one centimeter over five centimeters,
which is the same thing as 0.2.
And then the retention factor for substance B
is going to be equal to, how far did it travel?
Well, it traveled three centimeters
out of a total of five centimeters for the solvent,
past this origin,
past where we put the sample right over there.
Five centimeters, which is equal to 0.6.
So notice, in this situation,
the more polar substance had a lower retention factor
than the less polar substance, and that makes sense.
Because our stationary phase is more polar than our solvent,
and so the things that are more polar were harder to move
by the less polar solvent.