Abstract
This article describes a set of materials and a brief description of a technique that may be used to introduce concepts of color and visible absorption to students. Because everyday food items are used, the activity may be presented to high school students, nonscience majors, or may be used with science majors to help them develop good analytical techniques without worry about hazardous waste. A description is given of the use of Kool-Aid solutions to prepare a Beer's law plot, from which an unknown's concentration can be determined. Although a scanning spectrophotometer was used at our institution, a Spectronic 20 would be usable as well. Also, solutions of Kool-Aid, MandMs, and Skittles are compared in terms of their visible absorption band shapes. Students use these candy spectra to determine whether the dyes used to color these food items might be the same.
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