Measuring Volume Using a Graduated Cylinder

foreign welcome to measuring volume using graduated cylinder graduated cylinders come in various sizes all are read by measuring the lowest portion of the meniscus the meniscus is the curved surface of liquid as it sits in graduated cylinder meniscus is most often concave because liquid molecules are more attracted to Glass than to each other adhesive forces are stronger than cohesive forces to measure the volume of liquid in graduated cylinder read the level at the bottom of the meniscus when measuring liquid volume it is important to get eye level with the bottom of the meniscus to read cylinder you must know the value of each measuring line for example in 100 milliliter cylinder there are 10 subgraduates between 50 and 60. therefore the value of each subgraduate is one milliliter in this picture of 25 milliliter graduated cylinder you can see that there are 10 subgraduates between each number the task is to find out how much each measuring line is worth in this example we can compute the difference between The Graduate numbers 10 and 15 which is 5. take that number and divide it by the number of subgraduates between them which is 10. 5 divided by 10 equals 0.5 so each mark on this graduated cylinder is worth 0.5 milliliters the volume in this example reads 11.5 milliliters in this example of 10 milliliter graduated cylinder there are 10 subgraduates between the numbers 6 and 8. to determine the value of each subgraduate subtract 6 from 8 to get 2. then divide 2 by the 10 subgraduates 2 divided by 10 equals 0.2 each subgraduate has value of 0.2 milliliters the significant figures in measurement consist of all the certain digits in the measurement believed to be correct by the person doing the measuring plus one uncertain or estimated digit this means we estimate one decimal place past the smallest scale division inscribed on the graduated cylinder so the recorded measurement will be one digit more accurate than what the cylinder displays in this example an appropriate reading of the volume is 13.5 milliliters we now have three significant figures we are certain of the one and the three and the five we had to estimate let's say our volume reading is that the 11 milliliter marking we still need to add an additional estimated digit of zero so the recorded measurement would be entered as 11.0 milliliters practice reading the graduated cylinders in the following four examples pay attention to the numbers and graduations between each see if your volume readings are correct you have completed this learning activity measuring volume using graduated cylinder