How is it already THURSDAY?!  Our week has flown by and has been packed with lots of learning and experimenting. We look forward to Open House where we can show off the crime scene, the suspect list, our test samples/findings, and our working wall. Open House is tomorrow, Friday the 22^nd, from 9:00-9:30 on the 3^rd floor of the Murray Building. After Open House we will conclude our investigation with one final step of analyzing trace evidence under the microscopes. We will see how the smallest pieces of evidence can be used to solve BIG mysteries.

    Today we focused on chemistry again, but this time focusing on chromatography and basic chemical mixtures. We walked through how our eyes perceive color and how it’s determined by how light is reflected off millions of molecules in matter. Color can sometimes be misleading and something like black ink is made up of many different chemicals all with different molecular make ups. We were able to separate those chemicals and see the molecules reflect different color when we soaked it in a solution (rubbing alcohol).

    Using this knowledge of chemical mixtures and understanding that molecules reflect light, we used chromatography to separate the ink. Students were amazed to see that the solution separated the chemicals and all revealed different colors (different molecules).  Be sure to check out their results tomorrow!

How are color and science connected? Where is color found and how do we see it? Is black ink really black…why or why not? What is the difference between mobile phase and stationary phase? What do the molecules do in each stage? What was needed in order to move the ink from a stationary phase to a mobile phase?

We hope to see you at Open House tomorrow!

-Ms. Mills