Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
DATE: 7/8/2016
Organic Chemistry: Extraction of Fat and Thin-Layer
Chromatography
INTRODUCTION/GOALS OF EXPERIMENT
In this lab, students measure fat in potato chips and determine the
polarity of several solvents with a chromatography. When measuring chip fat,
the students use a solvent to draw out the fat by evaporating the solvent to
obtain fat. Students build on chromatography skills learned in CHEM 1001,
but focuses on the polarity aspect to discover the composition of an
unknown substance.
RESULTS
Part 1: Extraction of Fat from Potato Chips
Sample 1 (Regular)
Mass of dish +
chips
Mass of empty
dish
Sample 2 (Baked)
27.85 g
29.73 g
25.17 g
26.40 g
2.678 g
3.327 g
29.59 g
26.53 g
28.74 g
26.40 g
Mass of fat
0.8470 g
0.1260 g
Percent fat in
chips
31.63 %
3.787 %
Mass of chips
Mass of beaker
+ fat
Mass of empty
beaker
A simple calculation will allow you to determine if you fat content agrees with
that reported by the manufacturer. The mass of potato chip is mostly fat,
carbohydrate, water, and protein. Assuming the water content is low, use
the information from the chip package to perform the following calculation:
Regular
Baked
Fat Content (grams):
__10.00 g______________2.000
g________
Carbohydrate Content (grams):
g________
__15.00 g______________23.00
__2.000 g______________2.000
Total (grams):
g______
__27.00 g_______________27.00
__37.04
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What can you conclude about low-fat products from your analysis?
The carbohydrate content in low fat chips become fat and oil in
regular chips. This reaction probably happens when the potatoes
are fried in oil.
2. Potatoes are naturally low in fat. Where does the fat come from?
Potato chips are fried in oils and fats, which makes chips
unhealthy.
3. What do chemists mean by extraction?
The removal of a part, usually a specific part or element, of the
molecule from the rest of the molecule.
Aspirin
Label on
TLC Sheet
1
Distance to
Center of
Spot
Distance to
Solvent
Front
4.300 cm
4.500 cm
Calculated
Rf
0.9600
Acetaminop
hen
3.100 cm
4.500 cm
0.6900
Ibuprofen
No data
4.500 cm
No data
Caffeine
3.400 cm
4.500 cm
0.7600
Unknown
#3
3.400 cm,
4.100 cm
4.500 cm
0.7600,
0.9100
How many spots did your unknown produce? Can you identify which
compounds are present?
The unknown produced 2 spots, which were closest to aspirin and
caffeine. Caffeine had the same Rf, while the second sample traveled
0.2000 cm less than aspirin. This suggests that aspirin and caffeine
were present in the compound because the 2 dots produced by the
compound traveled the same distance as aspirin and caffeine.
Draw (or upload) a picture of your TLC plate below.
Note: ibuprofen did not leave a dot anywhere on the plate, which prevented
data from being gathered for this sample.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Aspirin
Caffeine
Acetaminophen
Ibuprofen
CONCLUSIONS
In this lab, students experimented with chromatography and extraction
of fat. In the fat extraction portion, the percentage of fat in my potato chip
sample was representative of the actual nutrition information found on the
label. My value of regular chips was 31.63%, only 5.410% away from the
actual percentage, which is 37.04%. My value of the baked chips was
3.787%, off by 3.620% from the official value of 7.407 %. These errors could
have been caused by improper measurements or procedural errors. For
example, when extracting the solvent from the fat on the hot plate, too much
or too little might have been extracted from the mixture and would have
affected the remaining amount.
In the chromatography section, I determined that unknown #3
contained aspirin and caffeine because of the Rf and distance traveled. Rf
values were the same for caffeine, and aspirin was off by 0.2000 cm, but that
is a small difference. These samples moved because they were polar and
interacted with the paper. The more polar they were, the less they moved
because they interacted more with the paper. Therefore, the most polar
molecule is caffeine and the least polar is aspirin. Ibuprofen did not show any
sign of action. There was no dot on the starting line, nor anywhere on the
plate. I confirmed with other students in the lab, and they did not achieve
any results with the ibuprofen sample either. This might be because the
ibuprofen sample was ineffective and simply did not interact with the plate.
Avoiding errors in future recreations of this experiment can be done by
ensuring that all samples are pure and effective. This will ensure that the
experiment can be done without unexpected errors.