Spinach contains all kinds of healthy compounds, but that’s not why I’m doing this experiment. Instead, I wanted to see if I could extract and separate several of the colorful compounds that are found in spinach leaves. If you soak the leaves in rubbing alcohol, the alcohol will extract the carotenoids (like beta-carotene) and chlorophylls, turning deep green while the leaves turn pale white. To separate the components of the extract I use a crude chromatography column, which I made using a Pasteur pipet, some cotton, sand and alumina that I scraped off of an enormous glass TLC plate that I had in the back of my prep room for some reason. The alumina acts as a separator, holding tightly to more polar compounds like chlorophyll, and less tightly to non-polar molecules like beta carotene. Each component can then be extracted using organic solvents of various polarities. I used hexane to extract the beta carotene and carotenoids (the yellow components), and a mix of hexane and acetone to ...