How To: Perform Titration with a Burette in the Chemistry Lab

Find out how everything in a chemistry lab works, from pipettes to burners to recrystallization to storage. You'll get precise instructions on how to work and perform certain scientific duties in the chem lab, whether it's chemical or just ordinary high school science.

Watch this video on how to perform titration with a burette in the chemistry lab. Burettes are graduated cylinders that measure the volume of the drained liquid. Burettes should not be dried by heating, and thus you may use immediately after rinsing with small amounts of the solution to be measured.

Because burettes are considerably tall, you may set them on the floor to transfer a titration solution. Transfer the titration solution into a burette with a funnel and remove the funnel from the burette immediately. Otherwise, the remaining solution on the funnel left on the top of the burette may drop into the burette, which gives a wrong titration result.

The titration solution should be added carefully near the endpoint. For example, add a half drop into the sample solution using a stirring stick. Because you often added an excess amount of the titration solution at the first titration, the first result should be regarded as a preliminary result for the following precise titrations.

Keeping the first titration result in mind, you may add the titration solution quickly until a few milliliters less than the endpoint. After that, you should carefully add the solution to determine the endpoint accurately.