[JessePinkman]

Greetings, disciples of the great study of Chemistry.

The assignment this time is as follows: Separate a mixture of tea leafs, sand, salt and water.

Oh boy.

We've got this much of these things:

- 10 g tea leafs
- 20 g sand
- 10 g salt
- 200 g water

Wizards of Chemicalforums, how do I separate these thingies into individual cups?

I and my idiot friend are cluelessly dumb-struck.

EDIT: Please keep in mind that we ought to use simple methods such as separation, sedimentation, distillation and all that jazz. I.e, we ought to do this without being smart about it.

EDIT II: My genius friend told me that the water will be infested with some kind of yellow "pigment" from the tea leafs, whatever that means, and that we should worry about it, for some reason. He also mentioned something about using coal to separate the pigment from the liquid, because that's what the teacher did. Please enlighten us on how to use coal to magically solve all of our problems. Thank you.

[Arkcon]

I'd like to welcome you, JessePinkman:, the the Chemical Forums (although I know you've been here a little while already), but I'd like to ask you to read the Forum Rules{click}.  We like to help you learn to help yourself.  Can you begin to show us your attempt?  I realize you're finding yourself stuck, but can take a stab at this problem?  Consider:

EDIT: Please keep in mind that we ought to use simple methods such as separation, sedimentation, distillation and all that jazz. I.e, we ought to do this without being smart about it.

If you have a mixture, what happens when you apply each technique?  Can you begin to narrow down the problem?

[JessePinkman]

Thanks for the answer, Arkcon the Global Moderator. I tried to use my reptile brain, alas, without any significant progress. But this is how we planned on doing it:

We realized that the salt will be mixed with the water and that whatever the tea leafs emit also will be mixed with the water, i.e, we'll have to deal with a liquid consisting of salt, whatever tea leafs emit, and water.

We realized that we could use some kind of filter to separate the liquid from the sand and the tea leafs. So we planned on first doing just that.

Then we planned on separating the sand from the tea leafs with some other kind of filter that accepts sand cones but not most shapes and sizes of tea leafs.

Then, once we had seperated the sand and the tea leafs from each other and the liquid, we planned on utilizing whatever coal technique our teacher was talking about to extract the tea leafs' "pigment". I will NEVER be able to figure this particular part of the assignment out by myself.

Then, we planned on utilizing "distillation" by boiling the liquid and thereby forcing the water in the liquid to become gas once we reach 100 degrees. The salt, that can't become gas until 1 200 degrees, will be left there for us to do fun things with while the water itself is gas. I don't know how I am supposed to move the gas somewhere safe using the relatively basic equipment that we'll be using and then turning it into a liquid again.

And then, everything will be fine presumably. I still won't know jack about chemistry, though.

[PhotoElectroMaterials]

Your method is perfect I think.  My guess is coal  which contains a lot of porous carbon will absorb the organic molecules released by tea.  Carbon is a good adsorbent. And the water which becomes gas (vapor) automatically condenses back to liquid when you pass it through a long tube with a temperature less than hundred degree celsius.  Its called a condenser and is a part of all distillation setups.

[DrCMS]

If you put tea leafs in cold water what happens?

[JessePinkman]

Your method is perfect I think.  My guess is coal  which contains a lot of porous carbon will absorb the organic molecules released by tea.  Carbon is a good adsorbent. And the water which becomes gas (vapor) automatically condenses back to liquid when you pass it through a long tube with a temperature less than hundred degree celsius.  Its called a condenser and is a part of all distillation setups.

This is such a fantastic answer! Thank you so much for taking the time to read all of my stupid posts.

Amazingly, two things remain unclear to me; am I supposed to just put some coal in the liquid and wait for things to happen and then, by carefully measuring and observing arbitrary factors, decide that enough is enough and take out the coal? how am I supposed to later extract the pigment from the coal? I suppose I could just measure the weight of the piece of coal and then measure the modified weight and compare the results. Or maybe I shouldn't, because maybe that's a stupid idea, but I don't know.

If you put tea leafs in cold water what happens?

Thank you for replying, kind stranger! I can only assume the tea leafs (I've been spelling it wrong this entire time!) "pigmentate" (I use quotes because I don't know what I'm talking about) the liquid. Boooooo! I can only assume that this pigment is part of the tea leaf and must be extracted and later added to my collection of tea leafs in order to produce a correct result. But then again, I don't know what I'm talking about.

[cseil]

That was funny 

[Corribus]

My guess is that the problem wants you to assume nothing happens to the leaves, and that you are only trying to separate the leaves from the water. Leaves WILL cold brew in time, but of course the substances that come out are no longer part of the leaves, so the fact that these substances are not specified in the problem... well, I think you're overcomplicating things.

Do tea leaves float or sink?

[JessePinkman]

That was funny 

Finally some appreciation for my fine humor.

My guess is that the problem wants you to assume nothing happens to the leaves, and that you are only trying to separate the leaves from the water. Leaves WILL cold brew in time, but of course the substances that come out are no longer part of the leaves, so the fact that these substances are not specified in the problem... well, I think you're overcomplicating things.

Oh man, you've now made me very unsure of things. I'll take that into account and prepare accordingly for whatever happens. You've been of humongous help, thank you so much!

Do tea leaves float or sink?

Oh wait I may actually know the answer to this! Leaves float and assuming tea leaves are leaves they also float! I can only assume we'll be dealing with fragments of tea leaves but surely the same thing applies to these fragments.