Never mind your mouth what about your teeth! I'll bet your fillings gave you a jolt. These days you can't learn the skill of using a pipette where you draw the liquid up to 2 inches from your mouth before capping the tube with your moist finger and letting out the excess just to the graduation mark. You have to use a rubber pipette filler. Chemistry will never be the same.

It was an accident- pipetting is a means of transferring a precise volume of liquid, using a calibrated tube. You are supposed to put a rubber bell over the end and draw the liquid up that way. I was being lazy.

Actually, Escafeldia, it felt like all the enamel had gone!

i know what a pipette is, i was just wondering why you would do it so close to your mouth

Cos I was a pratt, okay!

well next time keep your mouth shut
or take a pic so we can all have a laugh

In the days before Pipette Bulbs Chemistry students used to practice with water and a pipette learning the technique for measuring out volumes of liquid. They used to start with a 50ml pipette, being large you had more leeway with the sucking, and gradually went down in volume until you could manage a 5ml pipette without getting liquid in your mouth. Acids and Alkalies were transferred to flasks and conical beakers by pipette, or sometimes burettes. Poisonous liquids such as Potassium Cyanide volumetric solurions were always measured out from Burettes. No-one, unless they were completely mad, would measure out Ammonia Solutions in anything other than a Measuring Cylinder. Oh happy days - life will never be the same. No more dead or dying Laboratory Assistants to take out with the trash, no more partially blinded Analysts to take outside because they opened a Winchester Bottle of 0.88 S.G Ammonium Hydroxide without cooling it under the cold water tap before opening it.

I remember being warned about glacial acetic acid but hey we thought it's just glorified vinegar. We must have been really lucky not to be blinded. We also played blow football with blobs of mercury and glass tubes bet you can't do that now!

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It can't rain all the time

Laughing here, I have a history with pipettes, as in customs and excise! By the time they take from the measure (given by the bar person) to the glass then poured into and through their pipette, the true measure is distorted as the liquid is quite viscose! Maybe only by millileters, but my theory won a court case for a friend who was being charged of short measures. Nothing of the kind so she now has everything on optics and my arguement held up as the difference was so minute! One up for the good guys lol.........those, pour into measures are far too silly.

BUT I hasten to add those of our criminal element have got pipette theory off to a fine art, without getting a mouthful when they syphon petrol!! lol......Just shows you are not a criminal Jez....... A xx