What is a Beaker Used for In Science?

The Scientific method requires that experiments be tested in carefully documented, controlled, and reproducible experiments, which is especially true when doing chemistry. Chemicals must oftentimes be mixed, measured, and stored and beakers help to accomplish this. Beakers can do this because they are made of glass, are graduated, and have a spout.

Science Needs Precise Measurement

One must remember that measurement is integral to the scientific method. You can not quantify an observation unless you can measure it. For this, beakers are graduated.

Graduated beakers are marked with measuring lines on one side of the beaker to help measure a volume of liquid.  A 250 mL beaker for example might be marked by 50, 100, 150, 200, and 250ml lines. 

Graduated beakers, however, only give estimations of the volume and are normally accurate only to within 10% of the measurement. When more precision is needed, a graduated cylinder might be used instead.

Science Needs To be Observable

You can not measure without observation and Beakers are made of glass to help you observe the solution while mixing or heating.

Glass can do this because it can transmit light, and the heat tolerance for glass is high enough where you can heat the beaker and observe changes within the liquid. 

Science Needs To Test the Hypothesis

In a scientific experiment you might often want to experiment with different chemicals and determine what causes the change. For this, a beaker comes with a spout so that you can easily pour your solutions out into other solutions for mixing and doing science.

Science Needs to be Repeatable

You might often need to retest your experiments and the beaker is ideal for storing small batches of excess chemicals. The wide base of a beaker makes it harder to knock over.

Beakers are one of the best pieces of glass to own when doing scientific experiments. If you would like to learn more about beakers click here to visit our beaker page.