Analysis of accuracy of burette in determination of surface tension of liquids and study of its variation with detachment time and inclination angle

Abstract

A simple laboratory experiment to measure the surface tension of liquids has been proposed in this work, which is well suited for any undergraduate laboratory demonstration. Burette with modified Tate’s law has been found to return surface tension values as good as those obtained using Traube’s stalagmometer. Experimental data and error analysis show similar result accuracy. Also, a comparative study brings to notice the exactitude of drop weight method over drop number method, both from stalagmometer and burette. The rate of flow of 11–23 drops per minute has been found to be highly suitable for minimization of errors due to evaporation and satellite drop formation. Angular dependence of surface tension has been proposed numerically and validated for the respective case with the angle of 0° to deviate the least from literature value. The results obtained in this study are synchronous with the established theoretical understanding of the concept.