One of the mainly used laboratory tools, is the pipette, it is used to move some kind of substance or fluid. There are several types of the pipette according to the function, here is the explanation:
1. Drop Pipette
This drop pipette is used to take fluid with the low precision level. It means that this pipette can not make sure how many mililiter of fluid that you took, so just have to rely on your intuition.
This type of pipette is suitable to take fluid that is not very sensitive onto the measurement, for example to dissolve the fluid with water, or to move the food material in fluid form such as vegetable oil.
The use of this pipette also can be found on the usage of beauty serum and oral medicine for babies and small animals like cats.
This pipette usually created from the material of borosilicate glass that has tremendous power, than the average glass. In the tip, there is the pipette rubber that works to take the fluids.
2. Measuring Pipette
The measuring pipette is almost the same as the drop pipette, the only difference is on the precision level that is slightly higher than the drop pipette.
The use of the measuring pipette have to be accompanied with the filler or the rubber bulb, somekind of the sucking rubber that has to be pressed to take the fluid.
After that, the measuring pipette dipped to the fluid that want to be picked, the pressed filler release slowly until it sucks the fluids.
Take the fluid that has been sucked a little bit more, the purpose is that we can adjust after ther filler removed with our thumbs. The fluids will come down slowly, and we can adjust it with our fingers.
Afterwards, move the fluids to the container and dont ever let release your fingers before the tip of the pipette go inside the container. Make sure there is no bubble inside.
3. Volumetric Pipette
The volumetric pipette is the glass tube or plastic with the capacity of one to one hundred mililiter.
Volumetric pipette designed to be accurate, specialized in the liquid taking with the volume as the calibration value inside. So the pipette with the label of 10 ml can only be used to take the fluids as many as 10 ml.
The difference with the measuring pipette, the form of the volumetric pipette has the tube in the middle of it. But the procedure to use is as the same as the measuring pipette.
When using it, make sure that the inside of the pipette is clean. Dont let any bubbles form when you are taking the fluids.
Suck the fluids 2-3 cm above the line, so that we can adjust after the rubber bulb removed with our thumbs. The fluid will come down slowly and we can adjust it with our fingers.
Adjust the low basin to be straight as the line. And then move the fluids to the container.
There are several things you have to avoid when moving the fluids with the volumetric pipette:
- Dont forget to make the volumetric pipette wet first, because there is a chance there will be an evaporation. If this happened then the volume of the fluids will not be accurate.
- Pay attention to the room temperature, on the volumetric pipette there is sign of the best room temperature to do the measurement, usually around 20°C. The hotter the temperature can make the volume of the fluids to be expanded and shrinked.
- Do not swipe the tip of pipette with the stuff of high capilarity because it will absorp the fluid. So the measurement will be incorrect.
- Do not suck the fluid with such oblique angle because it will make the fluid to go out from the tip of the pipette.
4. Burette Pipette
The burette pipette is the special pipette used for the titration process, as the method to detemine the level of contamination of the reactant.
This pipete has several components such as:
- Stopclock
- Unit of measure, thats used together with the funnel to put the fluids inside
- Ring stand as the pillar to straighten the pipette
- Clamp to pinch the burette pipette
Before using it, clean it with the distilled water. And then put the fluids and watch the input volume.
Put the erlenmeyer flask that has been filled with the reactant fluids under the burette, and then slowly turn the fluids inside using the faucet.
Pay attention to the volume of the fluids to react the second fluids inside the erlenmeyer tube.
5. Micro Pipette
It has the same use of the volume pipette, but this pipette has greater amount of precision in the scale of micrometer.
The parts of the micro pipette:
- Plunger Button, the button to suck the fluids.
- Scale Volume to adjust the volume of the fluids.
- Function Wheel to choose the additional menu such as mixing, pumping, and sucking.