Question

You are a forensic scientist working for a police department. One piece of evidence from your current case is a letter written in a strange ink. You must separate the pigments in the ink to determine what it is made from. What procedure should you use?


A. Distillation
B. Chromatography
C. Evaporation
D. Filtering

Answer 1

Answer: b. Chromatography

Explanation:

Chromatography procedure will be used to separate the pigments in the ink.

To carry out this procedure, a small ink-dot is placed at the end of a filter paper. This ink-dotted end of the filter paper is then placed in a solvent.

As the solvent moves up the filter paper, it dissolves the ink mixture and spreads its component pigment across the paper.