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Photosynthesis

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Pigment Color | Pigment Type | Distance Traveled by Pigment / a (cm) | Distance Traveled by Solvent / b (cm) | Rf Value ab | Yellow | Carotene | 6.2 | | | Yellow-brown | Xanythophyll | 4.0 | | | Blue-green | Chloropyhll a | 2.9 | | | Green | Chloropyhll b | 1.3 | | | RESULT:

Table 1: The result of the experiment is to determine the colour of the pigment on filter paper by paperchromatography. Besides, the a and b which represents the distance travelled by pigment and distance travelled by solvent were measured and recorded in the table. The Rf value was then calculated by using the formula ab.

A= distance moved by the pigment from its original position
B= distance moved by solvent from the same position.
*Round Rf values to 2 decimal places

CONCLUSION:
We used paper chromatography to separate the pigments found in spinach. Since plants use several different pigments to capture light energy for the light dependent reaction in photosynthesis, we expected that we would see several different bands of pigments on our chromatography paper. As the data in Table 1 indicates, we obtained four bands of different pigments from the spinach leaf: yellow- brown, light green, green, and yellow. The bands moved different distances up the chromatography paper, and were of different widths. According to the data, our hypothesis was correct. Different types of pigments are present in plants. The distances traveled by the pigments can indicate how big or heavy the molecules of the pigment are, or how attracted to the solvent they are. The different widths of the pigment bands roughly show how much of each pigment is in the plant. These two pieces of evidence tell us that there are several different pigments used by plants in photosynthesis, and they are present in different amounts. Possible sources of error include mistakes in measuring distance traveled or band width, not using enough solvent to separate the pigments from each other, or using too much solvent and diluting the sample into the solvent instead of leaving it on the paper. I am curious to know why the yellow-brown pigment band did not move at all, and why there was another yellow band at the top. I think the yellow-brown pigment may not have been dissolved by our solvent, so it did not travel with it up the paper. This caused the pigments in that band to not get separated. I would like to perform the same experiment using different types of solvents to see if we get more pigment bands, or better separation of the bands that we found in this experiment.
Objective
This experiment is carried out to study the technique of separating the plant pigments by paper chromatography. Identifying the presence of different photosynthetic pigments in chlorophyll of Chinese mustard. Calculating the Rf values using plant pigment chromatography.

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