Australia's Science Forum

Hi everyone, love this place, lots of great information.

Have a problem. We have a 50ml burette on which the tap will not turn. The staff put some HCL in the burette hoping that would loosen the tap but with no success. Does anyone have any ideas?

Funny you should say that. This morning I Tried to turn the tap on a burette and it

snapped off cutting the top of two of my fingers. I'm glad I tried and not one of the students. So I am interested in the solution as well.

Cheers

Yowch!!

I would suggest either a spray of WD40, or perhaps a soak in paraffin or some other oil. Leave it over the weekend and on Monday give it a GENTLE tap.
Hopefully that will do the trick.

Good luck
Julie

If the burette has a glass tap try knocking gently with a large glass stopper around the area that is stuck. Quite often this works also works for glass stoppers stuck in bottles. Don't know why but it must be glass on glass to work.
Bernie

Hi all

Sorry this reply is a bit late but I'm sure I read in a previous post early this year or late last year that soaking in honey work!!
Can any one else remember or comment on this?
Someone's hubby was a beekeeper or some such thing.

Lorrae

Hi all,
I tried the honey - alas to no avail; the burettes are still frozen.
Liz

We tried honey with "frozen" taps on a voltameter and it did work with one of them After suggestions on this site we also tried paraffin, oil, tapping, hot water/ cold water, WD40 etc etc on the other and were about to give up. One of the teachers gave it an almighty wallop on the bench one morning (the chem teacher and I had tried to tap it as hard as we dared) Well the almighty wallop worked and we now have two working taps again. Try it if you dare!

I vote the bursar gives it the almighty wallop. Then the complaints about replacement costs will be minimised!

Cheers, K

I have an old glass bottle with the glass stopper containing 1M ferrous sulphate. I am trying to dispose of the contents (very sludgy-looking) and I just cannot get it open. Is it worth persisting or just put the whole lot in the waste collection stockpile? It's only a 500ml bottle and only about half full (no measurements on the actual bottle).

Collection, want has this to do with Burettes?

Sorry this is the thread that came up when I was searching for suggestions to unstick glass stoppers.

WOW I see

I run it under warm to hot water, if you just want to tip it out/collection waste, diluting it wont matter.