Question

The pipet used for transferring the pickle juice to the flask was dirty and consequentially some of the pickle juice stuck to the inside of the pipet and was not analyzed. Would the determined percentage of acetic acid in the food sample be higher or lower due to this error? Explain your answer.

Answer 1

Explanation:

Since, some of the given sample is stuck inside and behind the pipet. Hence, there will occur a decrease in the percent of acetic acid.

This is because a decrease in concentration of the acid will also lead to a decrease in the amount of sample taken for the estimation. Since. lesser is the amount or concentration present lesser will be its analyte concentration.

For example, we took 10 mg of a pickel sample but 3 mg of the sample remain stuck in the pipet. This means we actually titrating a  sample less than 10 mg.

Therefore, the analyte concentration in the pickel will also be less.