In order to transfer our solution onto the TLC plate, we need a TLC spotter. This is a micro pipette with a very, very narrow diameter. The way we're going to make a TLC spotter typically is to start with a capillary tube. This looks a lot like a melting point tube, except that it's open at both ends. It seems like it's very small, but in fact the diameter is really large on this. If I were to use this to spot a TLC plate, I'd get a huge spot that wouldn't be useful at all. What we're going to do is we're going to heat this in a flame, and we're going to, while it's hot, we're going to take it out of the flame and we're going to pull apart the two ends, and that's going to stretch the glass, and that's going to make a narrow diameter on the inside. All we need to do is break that in the middle, and we will have made two micro pipettes. First, let's light our Bunsen burner. I've turned this off, the gas is already on, and I've turned off this valve, close the valve on the bottom. That gives me a lot more control over how much gas comes out, how quickly. I'm going to use that bottom control to open up the gas, and I'm going to hold my flame to the side, so that it doesn't get blown out by the force of the gas. Sometimes you extinguish your flame if it's straight overhead. It looks like it's adjusted nicely, that there's a blue cone on the inside, nice hot spot, and I'm going to take my capillary tube, put it right in the middle, and when I feel that it's starting to soften up, I take it out and pull it, and now I've got a long skinny section of the glass in here. All I need to do is break it right in the middle there, I could put it on the desktop, and use my fingernail to break it, and now I have two micro pipettes. Every time you break glass like this, it's possible that you're going to get a jagged end at the tip, and so if you've noticed that when you touch it to the TLC plate, liquid doesn't come out immediately, then you can maybe break it a little more cleanly or take a look at it when you break it, but this works quite well. A common mistake is to take your capillary tube, and while it's in the flame, you don't remove it from the flame, you leave it in the flame, and you pull it, and what happens there is that it's going to continue to heat as you make a thinner, and then that's going to break the capillary into two pieces, and it's also going to fuse the end. And that's okay, this is still usable, we would just break that sealed off part off at the end, and now I have another micro pipette. One way to make a micro pipette is to start with a capillary tube, which is already very small, and when we stretch it, we can make two micro pipettes from that, but another way to do it, which takes a little more practice, a little more skill, is to actually start with a pastoral pipette, and this is going to give us a lot more glass to work with, and this is a way to make many micro pipettes all at once. It's also possible to purchase micro pipettes if you have a little money, but there's a lot of graduate students who spend a good part of their day making a whole bunch of micro pipettes with pastoral pipettes. And what I'm doing is I'm stretching a little bit, making a little thinner, it's getting nice and hot, nice and soft, and then when you pull it out of the flame, you can pull it really far, and now I can break this up into small segments, and this is a way to make many micro pipettes all at once.