Surey Rios Summer 2000	Date:
Name:	Period:
Who Done It? Paper Chromatography Lab Activity
Purpose: The purpose of this activity is to solve a crime via paper chromatography techniques.
You are a Gumshoe Detective for Acme Investigators. It is 10 minutes past 2:00 am and you are sitting alone in your small, dark, dusty, and cluttered office drinking a cup of cold Colombian coffee, watching old episodes of Hawaii 5-0, trying to stay awake. All of the sudden (what once seemed to be dead) the phone springs awake and rings. "Who could be calling at this time of night," you ask yourself. You answer the phone with a "Hello" and await for the voice on the receiver to answer you. A young woman responds with a quivering voice asking you to meet her at her house. It is 2:30 am when you arrive at Mrs. Distraes’ house in your 1974, rusty brown, Chevrolet Pinto. You ring the door bell and woman in her mid 30’s answers the door. She is visibly shaken and holding a note.
The note read: (This part was in pencil) If you do not give me 1 million dollars by the end of the week, then I will see to it that your poodle, "Evita" will become a nice area rug for my coffee table. I am watching you, (The signature was done in ink, but the rest of the note was illegible since the ink had run.)
You find a collection of pens scattered all over the outside of the house. You reassure Mrs. Distraes that you will solve the crime no matter what it takes. Feeling relieved, she thanks you. You carefully collect all of the pens and take them to your office along with the note for further testing. You interview the distraught pooch’s owner and find out that there are a lot of people that want to get rid of Evita because of numerous reasons; she barks, she bites, she digs, she howls, she growls, and she jumps on people. It is 4:00 am and you are diligently working in your office trying to pick up a latent fingerprint, but unfortunately it is to no avail. Not knowing who could have threatened Evita, you realize that you can match the ink on the paper to the ink from the pens by running a chromatograph. Once you know the source of ink that wrote the note, you can better identify who committed the crime by asking the right questions.
But first, you must run chromatography experiment on all the pens you have gathered. You have already completed such an experiment with the ink from the note, What are you waiting for? The life of Evita rests in your paws!

Procedure: D.Y.O.P. Design Your Own Procedure!

Using the notes gathered in class, along with notes/observations taken while your teacher ran through a basic chromatography, you are to design your own procedure in order to solve this crime. Instead of listing your procedure as 1. Abc 2. Def etc, use a diagram (a flowchart) to show what you are doing.