The Pasteur pipette is a laboratory dropper named after Louis Pasteur, used to transfer or remove small amounts of liquid from experiments. It is made of glass or plastic and consists of a tube topped with a rubber bulb. Plastic pipettes are disposable and not resistant to solvents. The pipette is not graduated, so precise measurements require a scale. To use, squeeze the bulb and insert the open end into the liquid, then release the bulb to pull the liquid into the pipette. The bulb should not touch solutions and the pipette should be cleaned before reuse.
A Pasteur pipette is a type of dropper used in laboratory experiments. It is named after Louis Pasteur because he used them extensively in his research. Most pipettes are cheaply made from glass or plastic and are widely available. Typically, the primary reason for using a Pasteur pipette is to transfer or remove small amounts of liquid from an experiment.
Louis Pasteur was a chemist who lived in the mid-19th century. After three of his children died of typhus before reaching adulthood, Pasteur began looking for treatments and cures for various diseases in both humans and animals. To prevent liquids from being contaminated during an experiment, Pasteur invented a pipette; in particular, he has continued to develop several vaccines for diseases such as anthrax, chicken cholera and rabies.
The Pasteur pipette is a standard laboratory instrument consisting of a thin glass or plastic tube, usually topped with a rubber bulb. It holds about one milliliter of liquid, although precise measurements cannot be made. The pipettes are not graduated which means you need a scale for exact measurements. They allow the transfer of liquids without contaminating the experiment and can also be used to draw gases from microscale distillations.
To use a Pasteur pipette, the experimenter must first squeeze the bulb and then insert the open end of the tube into the liquid. The liquid will be pulled into the pipette as the bulb is slowly released; squeezing the bulb a second time will force the liquid out. Some pipettes lack a bulb, replacing a piece of cotton. The pipette is inserted into the liquid and a piece of cotton is used to cover the other end. When the cotton is removed, the liquid flows out, although the cotton can also be used to filter solids from the liquid.
Plastic pipettes, on the other hand, consist of a piece of plastic molded into both the tube and the bulb; this type of pipette is suitable for biology, as it does not have to be resistant to solvents. Additionally, plastic pipettes are generally considered disposable because they are inexpensive and difficult to sterilize. Before reusing a Pasteur pipette, it must be cleaned by rinsing the tube with water. Because the rubber bulb contains many different contaminants, it should never touch solutions; therefore, the bulb should not need cleaning. Pipettes are very cheap, so many scientists prefer to dispose of a pipette instead of cleaning it.
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