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Spectroscopy Lab Report Final

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10 views5 pages

Spectroscopy Lab Report Final

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edwardbhyin
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Food Color Spectroscopy Lab

Process Engineering Lab September 2023


Lab Instructor: Shapley, Robbins, Dignon
Lab Day: Tuesday

Introduction

Spectroscopy is the characterization of material response to electromagnetic radiation. Materials


can only absorb certain wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, as only certain wavelengths
are capable of exciting their electrons from the ground state to an elevated state. The
measurement of this phenomena usually requires the use of a spectrometer, where the material of
interest is dissolved in solution and placed inside and analyzed. This allows for the correlation
between the absorbance of the material, and the concentration dissolved in solution. The
resulting relationship is known as the Beer-Lampert Law.
A=εbC
Where A is the absorbance, ε is the extinction coefficient, b is the pathway length, and C is the
concentration of the material in solution.

Materials and Methods

The experiment was performed in the lab at the C-Wing in the Engineering Building at Rutgers
New Brunswick on September 19th, 2023. The materials used included: Red food coloring with a
concentration of 1.68 g/L, seven cuvettes, seven pipettes, distilled water, a Thermo Scientific
Evolution 201 Spectrophotometer, six test tubes with cap, and a test tube rack.

First, 5 mL of stock solution was pipetted into a test tube, alongside 5 mL of distilled water to
create a two-fold dilution of the stock solution with concentration 0.84 g/L. Using the new
diluted solution, five more serial dilutions were created with concentrations of 0.42, 0.21, 0.105,
0.0525, and 0.02625 g/L respectively. 4 mL of each solution were then pipetted into 6 cuvettes. A
seventh cuvette was filled with 4 mL of distilled water to create a blank. The cuvettes were then
placed in a Themo Scientific Evolution 201 Spectrophotometer. The wavelength of maximum
absorbance was recorded for the most concentrated cuvette. The maximum absorbance at the
recorded wavelength was recorded for each sample.

Results

The maximum absorbance was recorded at 524.007 nm. The absorbance at each concentration
can be found in the data table below.
Sample Concentration (g/l) Absorbance at 524.007
1 0.84 1.379
2 0.42 0.715
3 0.21 0.368
4 0.105 0.213
5 0.0525 0.105
6 0.02625 0.066

Discussion

With the data, a plot and best fit line could be generated with the aid of MATLAB.

The plot depicts the absorbance of the red food coloring against the concentration of food
coloring in solution. The best fit line confirms that the data is linear and fits the Beer-Lampert
Law. From this information, the extinction coefficient can be obtained from the line of best fit.
As the line of best fit is a linear relationship between absorbance and concentration, simply
dividing the slope of the line by the pathway length of 1 cm will yield the extinction coefficient
of 1.61.
With the extinction coefficient, it becomes possible to find the absorbance for any concentration
of red food coloring within the linear regime of the Beer-Lampert Law and vice versa.

Appendix

The following equation was used to calculate the concentrations of each serial dilution.

C 1 ∙ V 1=C 2 ∙ V 2

An example calculation of the first dilution. Repeating the following will yield the remaining
concentrations.
g
1.68 ∙5 mL=C 2 ∙ 10 mL
L
g
C 2=0.84
L
The following is a manual calculation of the extinction coefficient.

A=εbC
g
1.379=ε ∙1 cm ∙0.84
L
ε =1.64
This can be repeated for the other concentrations and absorbances then finally averaged for an
overall extinction coefficient. The previously obtained coefficient in discussions is from
MATLAB.

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