Pipette Lab

Discussion: Water was transferred from burettes and pipettes to a beaker, in order to see how accurate and precise these instruments would be. The displacement of the burette would be the measured volume of the water. Similarly, the water from the 5.00mL or 10.00mL pipette was transferred to a beaker. The beaker w/ water mass and the initial mass of the beaker was subtracted to obtain the grams of water in the beaker. Using the temperature of the water, the density could be found, allowing for the theoretical volume of the water to be found. The percent error could be found once we had the theoretical volume compared to the measured volume. The water trails were similar in temperature, thus the density were similar throughout the experiment. The burette trails had an average percent error of -0.466% compared to the pipette average percent error of -1.63%. The burette trails were closer to the actual volume of the water, thus they were more accurate. Furthermore, it was also …show more content…
In every experiment there is some determinant error, and there is sometimes indeterminate errors. The most likely error in the lab would be human error and instrument error. During the pipette trails, the water might have not have been on the line , where pipette is calibrated for, causing inaccuracy and error. An inherent source of error could be by evaporation of the water or cohesion/adhesion causing the water to not come fully out of the pipette or burette . In an ideal situation, the pipette should be around the same error as a burette because the instrument is accurate when done correctly. The burette trails was more successful in having precise and accurate data. A way to see whether the pipette is more precise and accurate than a burette would be to get a giant sample size, like class data, and average out the results. Overall, based on the data, the burette was more precise and more accurate than the