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Chemguide - CIE A Level Chemistry Support - Paper 5 - Volumetric Apparatus
Chemguide - CIE A Level Chemistry Support - Paper 5 - Volumetric Apparatus
Paper 5
Introduction
If you have done a lot of practical work, this will all be obvious to
you. If you haven't, then you can easily waste several marks, and
this page is to try to help you to avoid that.
Volumetric flasks
Note: It is important to realise that when you make up 250 cm3 of
a solution, that you are making up a solution containing a known
number of moles in 250 cm3 of solution. That is not the same as
making it up using 250 cm3 of water.
If you added 250 cm3 of water to a solid and then stirred it, the
resulting volume is quite often not exactly 250 cm3. Interactions
between the substance you are dissolving and the water
molecules can cause the volume of the solution to change.
This is why you are using a volumetric flask - because you are
making the solution up to a known volume.
Pi tt
Pipettes
Burettes
Measuring cylinders
A measuring cylinder is fine for this, because all that matters is that
the acid is in excess. As long as that is true, the exact amount of
acid added doesn't matter.
There are a lot of similar videos on YouTube, and after you have
looked at the ones below, you will probably be offered other ones
as well. You will find minor differences between some of them.
Don't let that worry you - the ones below all show good technique.
You can also just tip the sodium carbonate into the beaker without
trying to transfer all of it. You can reweigh the container (clock
glass or weighing bottle) with whatever is left in it, and then work
out how much has been added.
Using a pipette
Note: Normally, you tend to put the acid in the burette and the
alkali in the flask. I am not sure why they have chosen to do this
the other way around, apart from the fact that it probably gives a
clearer end point.
This is only washed with water. Normally you would use tap water
to start with followed by pure water. The purest water is distilled
water, but these days most labs probably use deionised water.
Deionised water has had any ions removed, but not non-ionic
impurities. Since these don't matter in most titrations, that is
usually OK.
What does matter is that you should use the term either "distilled
water" or "deionised water", and not simply "water".
Washing a pipette or burette
Washing the conical flask that you are going to do the titration
reaction in
Let's assume that you know the concentration of the solution you
are pipetting because that is the one you have made up accurately.
If you add 25 cm3 from the pipette, then you could calculate
exactly how many moles of your substance there were in the flask.
Adding more water to the flask makes no difference to that.
The same thing applies to any water you add during the titration -
for washing around the inside of the flask, for example. That makes
no difference to the amounts of substances (measured in moles)
that you have added from either the burette or pipette.
So - rinse the burette and pipette with water and the solutions that
are going to be put into them. Rinse the conical flask only with
water.
Accuracy
So, if you are asked how to make your titration accurate, your
answer is to add the liquid from the burette drop-wise as you get
near the endpoint.
Reliability
To check the reliability of your result, you repeat the titration until
you have concordant titres. These are results which are within
0.10 cm3 of each other. (The titre is the volume of liquid added to
reach the end-point.)
When you average out your titration results, you should only use
your concordant titres.