Question

In next week’s experiment, you will use visible spectroscopy to quantitate the amount of colored dyes in a sports drink. Based on this week’s Jove videos, as well as how you made and used a calibration curve in last week’s experiment, design an experiment that one could follow to determine the concentration of Blue dye in Gatorade Glacier Freeze drink. Be sure to use concepts that you learned last week regarding making solutions with the correct glassware, making standard solutions, and making calibration curves. Note, your calibration curve will have the form y = mx + b. How does this linear equation relate to the one you provided?

Answer 1

To determine the concentration of blue dye in Gatorade Glacier Freeze, prepare standard solutions, use a spectrophotometer to measure absorbance, plot a calibration curve, measure the drink's absorbance, and apply the linear equation from the calibration curve to find the dye's concentration.

Step-by-step explanation:

Designing an Experiment to Quantify Blue Dye in a Sports Drink

Quantifying the concentration of blue dye in Gatorade Glacier Freeze involves several steps, including the preparation of standard solutions, the use of proper glassware, and the creation of a calibration curve. Here is a step-by-step design for such an experiment:

1. Prepare a series of standard solutions with known concentrations of the blue dye by diluting a stock solution using volumetric flasks for precise measurements.
2. Measure the absorbance of each standard solution using a spectrophotometer at the maximum wavelength of absorbance for the blue dye.
3. Plot a calibration curve on a graph with the absorbance on the y-axis and the concentration on the x-axis to establish the relationship between absorbance and concentration.
4. Measure the absorbance of the Gatorade Glacier Freeze solution.
5. Use the calibration curve to find the concentration of the blue dye in the sports drink from its absorbance, using the linear equation y = mx + b.

The equation y = mx + b represents the calibration curve where 'y' is absorbance, 'm' is the slope (the change in absorbance per unit concentration), 'x' is the concentration of the dye in the solution, and 'b' is the y-intercept (absorbance when the concentration is zero). This linear relationship is based on the Beer-Lambert Law, which states that absorbance is directly proportional to the concentration of a substance in solution within a certain range. The goal of the experiment is to apply this law to determine the concentration of blue dye in the sports drink accurately.