Melissa: 00:09

Hey. I'm Melissa.

Jam: 00:11

I'm Jam.

Melissa: 00:12

And I'm a chemist.

Jam: 00:13

And I'm not.

Melissa: 00:14

And welcome to chemistry for your life.

Jam: 00:16

The podcast helps you understand and do Chemistry, everyday life, at home. Sometimes.

Melissa: 00:23

Sometimes. Once a month, roughly.

Jam: 00:25

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Melissa: 00:27

Okay, Jim. So I have to own up.

Jam: 00:29

Uh-huh.

Melissa: 00:30

I promised you a diapers experiment this month.

Jam: 00:33

Yes.

Melissa: 00:34

But instead, I made you do a leaf experiment.

Jam: 00:37

Yes. I was very surprised when there were no diapers involved in this diaper experiment. Only toward the very end did I realize It actually wasn't a diaper experiment.

Melissa: 00:47

Well, here's the thing. Diapers are around all year, but fall leaves are only around for a short time period.

Jam: 00:54

That's true. Very true.

Melissa: 00:55

So that's why I changed things up.

Jam: 00:57

Mhmm.

Melissa: 00:58

And when doctor Moon doctor Kristen Moon emailed us about photosynthesis, She had an experiment because she does, homeschooling. So she had an experiment in the pages of the book she sent us, And I felt like that would be a good opportunity for us to take advantage of the being on that topic and the weather being at the right time,

Jam: 01:21

Yeah.

Melissa: 01:22

And I thought it would just be kind of fun.

Jam: 01:24

Yes. Yeah. Makes sense.

Melissa: 01:27

So the experiment we did today is very similar to when we did the at home experiment with the marker and you dipped it in water and it traveled up.

Jam: 01:36

Uh-huh. It's

Melissa: 01:38

very similar to that. However, in this case, we're looking at the pigments in Trees, leaves.

Jam: 01:47

Right. Right.

Melissa: 01:49

Okay. So tell me what all you did. It's a little bit more complicated, so I think we're gonna Post these instructions somewhere.

Jam: 01:55

Yes. Yes. So I got 2 glasses and Lots of leaves. I got about 10 green leaves and 10 red leaves that I could find, And I got some alcohol, some isopropyl alcohol, and I think that's the mains for the beginning at least. And I took the stems off the leaves, cut them all up, put them in respective glasses.

Jam: 02:26

So All the green leaf pieces in 1 glass, all the red leaf pieces in another glass. And then I put a tablespoon of the isopropyl alcohol in each glass, and then mashed all the leaves up with a the butt of a spoon for a while. And then I can already tell at that point that Some of the color of the leaf was getting into the alcohol. It was, like, kinda already happening, especially on the green one. It was started pretty pretty quickly.

Jam: 03:00

And then per instructions, I put some clear wrap over the glasses and put them in a pan, and then pour boiling water in the pan so that the bottom of the glasses were submerged in the in the hot water, the part that actually had the leaves and alcohol in them.

Melissa: 03:25

Okay. So let me stop you on that step. So we did that because we're sort of limited for time, and that would speed up the process of Distracting those pigments out into the isopropyl alcohol.

Jam: 03:37

Got it.

Melissa: 03:39

If you have unlimited time and you wanna stretch this out for a while for your kiddos. You can leave it overnight and just periodically mash the leaves, and that should do something similar. But be sure to keep it so the alcohol doesn't evaporate. But we did that to heat it heat it up to make the extraction happen faster. But With kids, that might be hard.

Melissa: 04:01

It's an extra step of boiling water. It's a lot easier to just mash it up and sit it overnight. So that's an option too If you're a busy parent and you don't have time to pour boiling water into something.

Jam: 04:13

Yeah. Or yeah. It's also added a little bit of danger to it as well. So yeah. So I did that.

Jam: 04:21

Left it for 30 minutes. Came back to it. Definitely looked to me like More color had leaked out of the leaves or whatever into the alcohol. Mhmm. Yeah.

Jam: 04:33

And was pretty apparent quickly that The red leaves had turned the alcohol yellow, not red. So that was interesting.

Melissa: 04:42

That is interesting.

Jam: 04:44

So I filtered all the leaves out as much as I could out of each glass, trying to, with a fork is what how I did that so that I could try to kind of also press down and make sure as much alcohol Kind of got out of the leaves as possible, so I wasn't pulling a lot of liquid out. Dumped them in the trash, and I put The coffee filter strip side cut just took a regular old, like, drip coffee maker, white Coffee filter and cut in in the rectangles that were taller than the glass. So it could go all the way down. She had a little extra that they were sticking out of the glass. And I took some last second realized This would help.

Jam: 05:30

I took some paper clips and unfolded them and then draped the, coffee filters over that paper clip.

Melissa: 05:40

Mhmm.

Jam: 05:40

So it's hanging down into the glass, and I fold it just at the right spot so that It wasn't all, like, sagging into the glass, and just the bottom of the filter was submerged in the the liquid of each glass and then cover them back up with the The plastic wrap and then left them overnight.

Melissa: 06:08

Okay. And what happened when you came back the next morning?

Jam: 06:12

They they didn't taste nearly as good as I

Melissa: 06:14

would've expected. But Don't eat anything that you put in this experiment.

Jam: 06:20

Yeah. A warning I I received at the very beginning is that alcohol is dangerous, and do not ingest it at all.

Melissa: 06:27

Mhmm.

Jam: 06:27

And wash your hands thoroughly and stuff. So we

Melissa: 06:29

just did that. Thoroughly. I do have that written down to warn at the end of this episode.

Jam: 06:35

So what happened when I came back is that the color of each glass had crawled up the coffee filter, And I don't know if it would would have gone further through more time or not, but it was about halfway up the filter. And all the color was at the top part. Like, somehow the bottom part of the cough filter that was actually closer to the liquid wasn't colored really. And so on the green leaf cup, there's a kinda green band with some slight variation in its color, about halfway up the coffee filter. And then in the red leaves cup, there was a yellow band with some variation in its color about halfway up the coffee filter.

Jam: 07:21

And so I pulled them out and left them to dry just to see if anything would Kinda become a little bit easier to see once it was dry.

Melissa: 07:29

So what you're seeing in that is the pigments of the leaves were dissolved in the isopropyl alcohol. And then as the isopropyl alcohol moved up the coffee filter, it brought with it pigments that had similar polarity as the isopropyl alcohol. So it could basically just bring them along with it.

Jam: 07:48

Mhmm.

Melissa: 07:48

And you'll see that different pigments travel at different speeds. So that's why you saw a little bit of a darker color in the green one on the bottom and more light at the top. And then there's a little bit of yellow even on on the green Yeah. On the corners. So different pigments travel at different speeds.

Melissa: 08:06

And then I think we saw something similar with your yellow one where Half light yellow and half dark yellow.

Jam: 08:12

Yeah.

Melissa: 08:12

It is likely that there was multiple types of yellow pigments, different types of beta Or sorry. Different types of flavonoids and carotenoids that made up different colors. And that bottom one, the yellow was a little darker. Could have been even if it was highly concentrated. I bet it's beta carotene because it could look kind of yellow if it's dilute and orange y the more concentrated it

Jam: 08:34

It definitely seemed kinda orange. I think if you could take that color and put out something else separate from the yellows next to you, It would definitely look more orange

Melissa: 08:44

Yeah.

Jam: 08:45

Than than the other yellow. So I think, yeah, it definitely stood out to me.

Melissa: 08:50

So you're doing a lot of things in this experiment if you're doing it with kids. You are showing them that what makes up the Color in leaves can be separated from the leaves. You're showing them that you can separate out some of those pigments, and some I've seen and we're think I'm gonna try to do another one of these experiments where you can see maybe the colors separate out possibly of the yellows and the greens more thoroughly. If you can do that, then you're also showing them that even though the leaf is green, there's other stuff in it besides just what makes it green.

Jam: 09:24

Right.

Melissa: 09:25

The big things with kids is to get them involved, to get them feeling comfortable and confident like they can do science, to get them to make Up theories or hypotheses about what they think will happen. You know? Ask them questions, and then have them talk about what actually did happen. So With your kids, let them cut up the leaves. Let them do the mashing.

Melissa: 09:46

I mean, gently so they don't break the glass or anything. Let them mash up the leaves. Let them come back and check on the leaves as they sit in the isopropyl alcohol and see if it looks any darker. Have them take a picture right at the beginning and then right at the end and compare, And ask them what they think. Say, what do you think is gonna happen when we put this on top of the leaves?

Melissa: 10:07

And then when it turns colors, they'll say, oh, wow. It Turned green. And you can maybe even pour water on a leaf and show them that it's not gonna turn as green as that isopropyl alcohol

Jam: 10:18

Right.

Melissa: 10:18

And get them to think about why. And then I would, maybe, if you can, start the paper towel coffee filter at the beginning of the day and let them go back and check on it. But, Hassan, what do you think is gonna happen when you put this paper towel in there, and Why do you think that there's not as much of this color at the bottom as there is at the top? And those kinds of questions. And if There is yellow on the green.

Melissa: 10:46

You can ask them, did you think that this was gonna be yellow or just green? And Why do you think there's yellow in it? You know, you can talk about all of that stuff. And a lot of times when you can see the yellow, It's a much smaller band and the green is much wider. And so you can talk about, oh, because this is wider here, that there's more of it.

Melissa: 11:10

So you can't see the yellow as well when it's all mixed up in the leaf. Those are some things you can do.

Jam: 11:16

Nice. Yeah.

Melissa: 11:18

Now something that we do in chemistry to manipulate how different molecules move up is it has a lot to do with polarity. We've talked about polarity. This is little over your kid's head unless you have high school age kids. But you can change the polarity of the solution that is moving up the paper.

Jam: 11:37

Mhmm.

Melissa: 11:37

So you might ask them, what do you think would happen if we did this in water? What if we did half water, half Rubbing alcohol and then you have the pure rubbing alcohol. So if they're older, you can even get them to make assumptions about that. If They're younger. That might be a little over their head, but even just seeing the colors move, I think would be exciting for those kids.

Melissa: 11:54

So there's a lot that you can do with this Experiment. You can get them to try green leaves. You can get them to try green and red leaves from the same tree. You can get them to Try green leaves from a bunch of different trees if it's the summertime and see if they are all the same. If you don't have any trees nearby you, if you live in a really urban area and it's hard to find or if you're not listening to this until winter, you can even get spinach leaves from the store and chop them up and use them too.

Jam: 12:22

Oh, nice.

Melissa: 12:23

So there's a lot of different ways you can do this experiment and a lot of different ways to get kids excited and get them interested and get them feeling like they can do science.

Jam: 12:34

Thing is cool.

Melissa: 12:35

I think I like this one because it is a little bit more complicated so they can feel a little bit more official that they're doing something, especially for those older kids. You know? It's not so simple.

Jam: 12:46

Yeah. It's definitely one of the more complicated ones we've done. This one and then the cabbage juice one, I think both had a lot more steps than some of the other ones, which could definitely be fun for, for older kids and stuff like that too for sure. As always, I filmed this while I did it. And even though my results could be pretty different from yours if you add some water to it or whatever, You can always check out the video of us doing it on our Instagram and Twitter and Facebook.

Jam: 13:14

And So you could do that and and follow along if you want or pause it as you go or whenever. Yeah.

Melissa: 13:19

This experiment, especially, is not safe to do without parental supervision. So make sure that parents, you're present while the kids are working with their rubbing alcohol. It's not safe to drink. If they get it on their hands, they should wash it off right away and not put it in their mouth or anything. And be sure that you wash all your glassware very thoroughly if you're going to be using it to eat off of later on.

Melissa: 13:42

Well, thanks for doing this experiment, Jam, and thanks to all you parents out there or supervisors of children who are helping get them excited about science and helping them get into that Scientific mindset.

Jam: 13:52

Absolutely. Yes. Thank you.

Melissa: 13:55

And we'd also like to give a special thanks to doctor Moon. Be sure to go check her out At her Instagram at kristen moon science. Again, we took this experiment and did an app adaptation from some materials that she sent us, and I believe that she created. Thank you so much for that, doctor Mann.

Jam: 14:12

This episode of Chemistry For Your Life was created by Melissa Klee and Jame Robinson. We'd like to give a special thanks to E Robinson who reviewed this episode.