Laboratory Pipettes

The pipette is a volumetric instrument used in chemical science and life and health science laboratories that allows the aliquot of a liquid to be measured with great precision. They are usually made of glass or plastic. It is made up of a transparent tube that ends in one of its conical tips, and has a graduation (a series of engraved marks) with which different volumes are indicated.

Some are graduated or simple, that is, they are flush once to zero milliliters, and then they are allowed to drain to the required volume; in others, the so-called double flush or double gauges, it is made up to the mark or upper gauging and the liquid is allowed to drain carefully until it reaches the lower gauge. Although they have the disadvantage of measuring a fixed volume of liquid, double-gauge pipettes greatly outperform graduated pipettes in that their precision is much higher, since the measured volume is not modified if the tube is broken or deformed. conical tip. In order to suction the liquid with greater precision, the device known as a propipette is used, more than anything else in double-gauge pipettes.

The pipette is used to measure and transfer liquid; It basically works like the volumetric pipette, with the difference that it has the ability to measure different volumes; Of course, this has the disadvantage that intermediate measurements have a lower level of precision.

A micropipette is a laboratory device used to absorb and transfer small volumes of liquids, and allow their handling in different laboratory techniques. The place where it was manufactured and used for the first time was at The Carberg Laboratories in Denmark and its creation is attributed to the German Heinrich Schnitger.

The volumes that can be captured by these instruments vary according to the model and type of pipette: the most common, called p20, p200 and p1000, admit a maximum of 20, 200 and 1000 μl, respectively. Micropipettes are very useful for handling any kind of liquid because their tip can be discarded, since they use disposable plastic tips, which are usually sterile. A micropipette is made up of a push button or plunger, sucker, and liquid dispenser.