Spearmint Leaves Join
Steam Distillation Lab
Tuesday--Sep 22, 2009 Filed in:
233
This semester I am
making a slight change to the steam distillation
experiment (Lab 5). In addition to isolating
(S)-(+)-carvone from caraway seeds, you are also
going to isolate (R)-(-)-carvone from spearmint
leaves. For more details on this modification
download the file "steamdist_modification.pdf" on
the File Sharing page.
You
will work in groups of two. One member of the
group will isolate (S)-(+)-carvone from caraway
seeds, the other will isolate (R)-(-)-carvone from
ground up spearmint leaves. The spearmint leaves I
purchased are dried. Since I'm not sure how much
carvone is present per gram of dried leaves, we
may need to increase the starting mass of
spearmint leaves. We'll see how the first lab
section goes and then modify as necessary. Good
luck. It should be a very fragrant lab.
