Spearmint Leaves Join Steam Distillation Lab

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.