ARTE
BELEZA E BEM-ESTAR
ARTESANATO
CULTURA E HISTÓRIA
ENTRETENIMENTO
MEIO AMBIENTE
COMIDA E BEBIDAS
ENGENHARIA REVERSA
CIÊNCIAS
ESPORTES
TECNOLOGIA
TECNOLOGIA VESTÍVEL
The Separating Funnel and the Partition Coefficient
Charlie

Criado por

Charlie

23. setembro 2026DE
33
0
0
0
0

The Separating Funnel and the Partition Coefficient

Distillation separates by boiling point, and pays the latent heat to do it. This rung separates by something cheaper: by what a substance PREFERS. Shake a mixture with two liquids that will not mix, let them settle, and every dissolved substance distributes itself between the two layers in a fixed ratio — its partition coefficient. Nernst wrote the law down in 1891. It sounds modest, and it is the single idea underneath every rung that follows in this batch: a chromatography column is nothing but this same partition repeated a few thousand times in a row, with one of the two phases held still and the other flowing past. Build it first with your hands and a funnel, where you can watch the colour move from one layer to the other, and every later rung stops being magic.
Iniciante
3 hours

Instruções

1

Find two liquids that refuse to mix

Pour water into a jar, add an equal depth of cooking oil, shake, and set it down. Within a minute you have two clean layers with a sharp line between them. They separate because water molecules attract each other far more strongly than they attract oil, so mixing costs energy the system will not pay. That line is the interface, and everything in this blueprint happens across it. Note which layer sits on top: here the oil, because it is less dense. You will need to know which tap-end to drain, and getting it wrong is how a first attempt is lost.

Ferramentas necessárias:

Frasco de vidroFrasco de vidro
2

Charge the funnel — and never fill it more than two-thirds

Close the tap. Pour in your water layer, then your solvent layer, filling no more than two-thirds. Stopper it. The empty third is not caution, it is what lets you shake. A full funnel cannot mix and will spit past the stopper the moment you invert it. Check the tap is actually shut before anything goes in — this is the mistake everyone makes once, and the floor tells you immediately.

Materiais para este passo:

Etanol de laboratório, 95 %Etanol de laboratório, 95 %50 ml

Ferramentas necessárias:

Ampola de decantaçãoAmpola de decantação
Copo de precipitação de borossilicatoCopo de precipitação de borossilicato
3

Shake, and VENT

Hold the stopper down with one hand and the tap with the other. Invert, shake gently once, then — still inverted, tap pointing away from you and everyone else — OPEN THE TAP to vent. You will often hear it hiss. Volatile solvents build pressure the instant they are shaken, and a funnel that is not vented fires its stopper across the room. Vent after every few shakes, never point the tap at a face, and shake gently: a violent shake makes an emulsion, a milky layer that refuses to settle and can cost you the whole run.

Ferramentas necessárias:

Ampola de decantaçãoAmpola de decantação
Óculos de proteção estanquesÓculos de proteção estanques
Luvas de nitriloLuvas de nitrilo
4

Let it settle, then drain the bottom layer only

Stand the funnel in a ring, remove the stopper — it will not drain with the stopper in — and let the interface sharpen. Open the tap and run the LOWER layer out into a beaker, closing it the instant the interface reaches the tap. Then pour the upper layer out of the TOP, not through the tap. Draining it past the residue in the stem is how the two layers get remixed at the last moment, and it is the commonest way a clean separation is thrown away.

Ferramentas necessárias:

Ampola de decantaçãoAmpola de decantação
Copo de precipitação de borossilicatoCopo de precipitação de borossilicato
5

Watch a dye choose a side

Now make it visible. Add a drop of a water-soluble food colour to a water/solvent pair and shake: the colour stays in the water. Repeat with a plant dye extracted in alcohol and it will move the other way. Nothing has reacted. The molecule has simply found the phase it is more comfortable in, and the ratio it settles at is a property of that molecule, not of how hard you shook. That reproducible ratio is what makes separation a measurement rather than a knack.

Materiais para este passo:

Corante alimentarCorante alimentar1 garrafa

Ferramentas necessárias:

Ampola de decantaçãoAmpola de decantação
Pipeta graduada (de Mohr)Pipeta graduada (de Mohr)
6

Extract three times with a third of the solvent

Split your solvent into three equal portions and extract three times in a row, combining the three extracts, rather than extracting once with all of it. This is the whole trick, and the notebook proves why. Every extraction leaves a fraction behind; doing it three times leaves a fraction of a fraction of a fraction. The difference is not small, and it is the reason a chromatography column — which is thousands of tiny extractions in series — separates things a single shake never could.

Materiais para este passo:

Etanol de laboratório, 95 %Etanol de laboratório, 95 %60 ml

Ferramentas necessárias:

Ampola de decantaçãoAmpola de decantação
Copo de precipitação de borossilicatoCopo de precipitação de borossilicato
Pipeta graduada (de Mohr)Pipeta graduada (de Mohr)
7

How much is left behind

A carregar o notebook Jupyter…

Ferramentas necessárias:

Balança digitalBalança digital
8

Break an emulsion when you make one

Sooner or later a shake gives you a milky middle layer that will not clear. Do not shake it more. Three things work, in order of how little they cost you: wait, because many emulsions settle in twenty minutes; add a spoonful of salt to the water layer, which raises its ionic strength and squeezes the organic phase out; or swirl gently rather than shaking on the next attempt. An emulsion is not a mistake in your technique so much as a sign the two phases are closer in character than you assumed — which is itself information about your solvent choice.

Ferramentas necessárias:

Ampola de decantaçãoAmpola de decantação

Materiais

2

Ferramentas necessárias

7

CC0 Domínio Público

Este blueprint é liberado sob CC0. Você é livre para copiar, modificar, distribuir e usar este trabalho para qualquer finalidade, sem pedir permissão.

Apoie o Maker comprando produtos através do Blueprint, onde ele ganha uma Comissão Maker definida pelos vendedores, ou crie uma nova versão deste Blueprint e inclua-o como conexão no seu próprio Blueprint para compartilhar receita.

Discussão

(0)

Entrar para participar da discussão

Carregando comentários...