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Questions to Consider:
a) What should the mass of 22mL of water be? The mass of 22mL should be 22g; to calculate this you use the 1.00g/1mL conversion. (When finding the most precise piece of glassware, you look for the value closest to 22) b) Which piece of glassware is the most accurate for measuring 22mL of water? According to the class data, the 100mL graduated cylinder was the most accurate for measuring 22mL of water; however, the accuracy of the markings on volumetric glassware varies greatly. The markings on beakers and flasks are usually about plus or minus 5% of the volume of the container. As such, they should be used only when a rough estimate of volume is required. The tolerance on graduated cylinders is about 1%. Volumetric flasks, burettes and pipets are the most accurate with tolerances of less than 0.2%. c) Which piece of glassware is the most precise for measuring 22mL of water? According to the class data, the 10mL graduated cylinder was the most precise for measuring 22mL of water; however, in reality, a burette is more accurate in that each mL of measurement, due to the smaller diameter of the tube, is larger in physical size between graduations and is therefore easier to read and a burette also begins its graduations from the top. Graduated cylinders and beakers measure from the bottom and each mL division is very small in comparison. An example my mother, a Nursing Professor at ICCC, gave me was when they draw blood, they want to be exact so by using a tiny syringe because of its precision, they are able to accomplish that.
I believe that our answers were off due to certain groups mentioning during lab they had measurement error when they were doing their individual part of the experiment. Other errors and problems that could have contributed to our results are possibly individuals reading the meniscus incorrectly, not zeroing out the scale, not drying out the beaker enough and leaving residue from the previous measurement, or not copying numbers down correctly. There are a number of errors that could have been made. d) Would your answer to any of these questions change if you were measuring 2mL of water? No. Regardless of the amount being measured, I would still say the burette would be both the most accurate and precise. e) What about 220mL of water? No. Although measuring 220mL would take a greater length of time than to measure 2mL in the burette, I would still use the burette. f) What is the difference between precision and accuracy?
Accuracy is the degree of closeness of a measured or calculated quantity to its actual (true) value. Precision is degree to which further measurements/calculations show the same/similar result. As previously stated, these terms although similar actually have distinct differences in definition that we must be aware of when carrying out experiments such as this one.