A student researcher performed a chromatographic seperation of caffine and aspartame with menthol as the mobile phase using C-18 column. The retention times for menthol, caffine, and aspartame were 29.7 s, 98.0 s, 140.0 s, respectively.
A.) What is the selectivity factor (relative retention) for this column?
B.) Calculate the hypothetical retention times for caffine and aspartame if their retention factors were reduced by 28.0 %. Assume the mobile phase retention time (tm= 29.7 s) remains constant.