Chromatography

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2016

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins, development and uses of chromatography. In its basic form, it is familiar to generations of schoolchildren who put a spot of ink at the bottom of a strip of paper, dip it in water and then watch the pigments spread upwards, revealing their separate colours. Chemists in the 19th Century started to find new ways to separate mixtures and their work was taken further by Mikhail Tsvet, a Russian-Italian scientist who is often credited with inventing chromatography in 1900. The technique has become so widely used, it is now an integral part of testing the quality of air and water, the levels of drugs in athletes, in forensics and in the preparation of pharmaceuticals. With Andrea Sella Professor of Chemistry at University College London Apryll Stalcup Professor of Chemical Sciences at Dublin City University And Leon Barron Senior Lecturer in Forensic Science at King's College London.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time for more details about In Our Time
0:04.0	and for our terms of use, please go to bbc.co.uk slash radio4.
0:08.9	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:10.9	Hello, one of the big ideas in chemistry today is chromatography, a way of separating
0:17.0	mixed-up substances to analyze them or extract something useful.
0:21.2	In its basic form, it's familiar to generations of school children, from when they put a spot
0:25.5	of ink at the bottom of a strip of paper, dip it into water and then watch the pigments
0:29.6	spread upwards, revealing their separate colors.
0:31.8	Sometimes, if you are lucky, like feathers on a bird of paradise.
0:35.7	With progressive discoveries over 200 years, some fine-tuning and an occasion of the bell
0:40.2	prize, chemists can now sift out the different molecules in just about any substance.
0:45.2	It's a process that has an essential role in many parts of modern life, the cleaning
0:49.5	of drinking water, in forensic science and in medical tests when making and in making
0:54.6	pharmaceuticals.
0:55.6	We need to discuss chromatography, our Andrea Sulla, professor of chemistry at University
1:00.9	College London, April Stalker, professor of chemical sciences at Dublin City University
1:06.2	and Neon Baron, senior lecturer in forensic science at King's College London.
1:11.2	Andrea Sulla, we've mentioned paper and ink.
1:14.0	What's going on there and can you give us an example of chromatography?
1:19.2	Well, this is one of those wonderful little experiments or demonstrations, if you will,
1:24.0	that everyone should do with their children.
1:26.2	If you've never done this before, then what you really have to do is to get either some
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