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Glite Dictionary
chromatography column

chromatography column

7.3
A tall glass tube that separates mixtures by passing them through a material that holds some parts
  • noun
  • /kroʊˌmætəˈɡrɑːfi ˈkɒləm/
  • Specialized
translation icon : columna de cromatografía
  • The researchers used a chromatography column to separate the different pigments in the plant extract.

Examples

  • The scientists then passed the variants through a chromatography column to which human thrombin was attached.

    Academic text (1993)

  • In the lab, they filled the chromatography column with silica gel to help isolate the chemical compounds.

  • During the experiment, the mixture flowed down the chromatography column, allowing the substances to be separated based on their affinities.

Surface Forms

chromatography column singular
chromatography columns plural

Morphology

chromatography + column

The compound is directly compositional: a 'chromatography column' is simply a column used for chromatography, so a learner who knows 'chromatography' (the separation technique) and 'column' can infer it is the vertical tube used in that process. This noun+noun construction follows standard, cross‑linguistically common composition patterns, making the meaning transparent to learners who know both constituents (noting only that 'column' has a technical lab sense but the general ‘vertical/tube’ sense is sufficient to predict the referent).

Etymology

Chromatography column comes from a simple image: early chemists saw colored bands form like stripes as a mixture moved down a tall tube, so chromatography (literally 'color writing') and column (a vertical tube) were put together. That's why chromatography column now means 'a vertical tube used to separate a mixture into parts'.