Investigating The Substances Of Water Chromatography

Most chemists and many other scientists must routinely separate mixtures and identify their components. The ability to qualitatively identify the substances found in a sample can be critical. For example, an environmental chemist investigating samples of polluted ground water will want to know which toxic ions might be present in a sample. Chromatography is one of the first tools used in such situations. In this technique, many types of mixtures can be separated into the component pure substances; by comparison to a standard sample, each component substance can also be tentatively identified. Many varieties of chromatography exist, each one designed to separate specific types of mixtures. The common feature of each type of†¦show more content†¦The movement of the components in the mobile phase is controlled by the significance of their interactions with the mobile and/or stationary phases. Because of the differences in factors such as the solubility of certain components in the mobile phase and the strength of their affinities for the stationary phase, some components will move faster than others, thus facilitating the separation of the components within that mixture. The first chromatograph was invented by Russian botanist Mikhail Semenovich Tsvett. Mikhail Tsvet was born 14 May 1872 in Asti, Italy. His mother was Italian, and his father was a Russian official. His mother died soon after his birth, and he was raised in Geneva, Switzerland. He received his B.S. degree from the Department of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Geneva in 1893. However, he decided to dedicate himself to botany and received his Ph.D. degree in 1896 for his work on cell physiology. He moved to Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1896 because his father was recalled from the Foreign Service. There he started to work at the Biological Laboratory of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His Geneva degrees were not recognized in Russia, and he had to earn Russian degrees. In 1897 he became a teacher of botany courses for women. In 1902 he became a laboratory assistant at the Institute of Plant Physiology of the Warsaw University in