chromatography is applied science in the extreme
people that work in chemistry, like "I am a chemist"
or a lab technician or something like that
people that work in laboratories...a hundred percent
are involved in chromatography... in some way
I want to make a stretch and say that of people that work in laboratories
chemists, industrial chemists, even research chemists
perhaps 40% of them do chromatography all the time
this is their job..... is doing chromatography
the reason being that most people working in laboratories
are doing analysis on some level...... quantitative analysis
what's in this?...... how much is in this?
the tool was chromatography
chromatography, the word, and the activity describes a lot of different things
so, when I say chromatography, I'm talking about a wide range of things
chromatography is all about separations
it's all about.... you separate things and then by separating them
you quantitate them and figure out what they are
but you have to separate them first
That's what chromatography is
examples are good
chromatography is about separation
we have, these are foam they're small and light and they float
we have big stars, little stars and discs
this model is made with Google SketchUp
kind of a cool graphics program
the model demonstrates a column, the column in chromatography consists
of the mobile phase and the stationary phase
the stationary phase, in this case, is a trough full of water with pegs
the mobile phase would be water
the stationary phase would be the trough (with the pegs)
notice how the stars and the discs are fairly small relative to the column
the idea here is to fill the trough with water so it's about two thirds full
the discs and the stars will float
run the water down the column; It's flat. So the water will have to
flow in from one side to the other
the discs will float and they will go down the column
as they go down the column they will bump into the pegs
so they will move the bump and move and bump and they move
in a random fashion but some of them will bump into the pegs more than others
again, as an example
let's say the water starts flowing
about 15 min. later, the two stars and the pegs have been bumping along
and bumping along and bumping along
in about 15 min. the discs which aren't going to see the pegs very much
are down here in group
the small stars are in group about here
and the large stars are in group about here
so that they're separated, kind of, they're not perfect
they're separated, kind of, depending upon the nature of the interactions
this is the whole idea of chromatography
the idea of chromatography is interaction between a mobile phase
which in this case is water and the stationary phase
which in this case is the pegs
this is what chromatography is all about.
Please remember that this is a model
visualize the behavior of the stars and the pegs in the trough
chromatography involves the passage of time
it's like a race
you start to race and you see how long it takes for them to finish
'them' referring to the big stars, small stars and the discs
in this case the discs come out first at about 9 min.
the small stars come out second at about 14 min.
and the large stars come out last at about 18 minutes
So there is a passage of time associated with chromatography.
and I want to conclude where I started
there are many many jobs in chromatography
people that work in chemistry,,, in laboratories .....
there is probably no more familiar activity than chromatography