Separation Techniques

In our classroom, we did an experiment where we traded mixtures and found out how much each element in the mixture weighed. In the mixture we made, we had 2.28 grams of sand, 2.23 grams of sugar and 3.75 grams of boiling stones. That came to a total of 8.36 grams.
In the mixture we received, there was boiling stones, iron and sugar. The boiling stones where large enough for us to just pick them out with one of the tools. We set those aside, and tried to use the magnet to get the iron out of the sugar, but that wasn't working out so well for us. We took Mr. Lugwig's advice and used a paper funnel and water to filtrate the sugar out of the iron, the sugar would dissolve so we had to weigh the combination of the iron and sugar before we went through with the funnel process. The total of the sugar and iron was 13.06 grams and we proceeded with the funnel and water. The next day we came back and took the iron out, it seems that some of the sugar had crystalized over the iron, making it hard. So that might explain why the measurements weren't as accurate as it could have been. We did weigh the iron and took the final measurement.
We did another experiment with filter paper and markers, we used chromatography to separate the other colors out of the one color that we originally drew on the filter paper.
Out of all four of the different separation techniques, we used two in the experiments that we performed; filtration and chromatography.
The other two are distillation and centrifugation. Distillation is when all the liquid is evaporated out of the mixture and all that is left is distilled matter. Centrifugation is when you use a centrifuge to separate the liquid as well as all the other matter, in layers. Mr. Ludwig did an example with dirt and use the centrifuge to separate the sediment from the water.