Understanding the concentration of a solution

Aim To understand the SI units for concentration and the precision of digital instruments

Apparatus
 1 small test tube Safety
 0.2g of soluble starch
 10 ml graduated pipette & pipette filler Don’t fit the pipette filler yourself,
 1 small beaker (100ml) ask your teacher.

Method
1. Measure 0.01g of soluble starch in a dry weighing boat.
2. Add this to 5ml of hot water in a small beaker and stir until the starch dissolves
3. Make this solution up to 10ml by adding a further 5ml of water using a graduated pipette
4. Repeat steps 2 to 4 with 0.03g, and then with 0.10g of starch solution.
5. Add one drop of iodine solution to each tube and mix thoroughly.
6. Transfer enough of each starch solution to a clean colorimeter cuvette.
7. Take a reading of absorbance at ‘orange’ wavelengths (610 nm).
8. Record your results in the table below.

Mass of
Uncertainty
starch Colorimeter Textbook value Starch
Solution of
added / g absorbance of absorbance concentration /
colour colorimeter
value at 610nm gdm-3
absorbance
(+/- 0.01g)
0.01 0.4

0.03 0.7

0.10 1.1

Questions
1. How many times smaller than 1 litre is 10ml? ……………………………………..
2. How many grams of starch would you need to add to make 1 litre of each of the solutions?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………………
3. What is the difference between the units dm3 and dm-3 ?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
4. Explain what gdm-3 stands for.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

© David Faure, InThinking www.biology-inthinking.co.uk

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