What Is a Beaker?
A beaker is a container for liquids used mainly in chemistry experiments.
Even people who are not chemical manufacturers or science faculty members have used a beaker at least once in elementary school or other science experiments.
Glass is the main material used because it does not react with chemicals and can be easily stored and stirred.
In addition to glass, beakers made of quartz, stainless steel, plastic resin, and other materials are also available and are used for different purposes.
Uses of Beakers
Beakers are used for temporary storage of chemicals, stirring or mixing liquids, and dissolving solids.
Beakers are not suitable for long-term storage, as they have no lid. However, they can be used to store liquids for a few hours until the next operation.
For mixing and dissolving, they are used with a magnetic stirrer, which uses magnetic force to stir the material.
As most of them are made of glass, they can break if they are handled roughly or dropped. Since dangerous chemicals are kept in them, safety precautions must be taken.
Principle of Beakers
Beakers are designed with a wide mouth to allow easy loading and unloading of chemicals and the addition of solids, such as powders.
On the other hand, they are not suitable for weighing chemicals. Although beakers are marked with a scale, they have a numerical error of 1 to several percent and should not be used for weighing in chemical experiments that require precision.
In addition to ordinary beakers, conical beakers, and tall beakers are used for chemical experiments.
Conical beakers have narrower mouths than the bottom. This makes it easier to add chemicals to the beakers from the top, such as for neutralization titration and also makes it easier to hold and stir the beakers by hand.
Tall beakers are narrower and taller than standard beakers. Taller beakers prevent chemicals from spilling when stirring.
Tall beakers are also easy to set in heating equipment such as mantle heaters, making them suitable for heating experiments.