Glassware

Laboratory glassware refers to a variety of equipment, traditionally made of glass, used for scientific experiments and other work in science, especially in chemistry and biology laboratories. more...

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Some of the equipment is now made of plastic for cost, ruggedness, and convenience reasons, but glass is still used for some applications because it is relatively inert, transparent, more heat-resistant than some plastic up to a point, and relatively easy to customize. Borosilicate glasses such as Pyrex are often used because they are less subject to thermal stress. For some applications quartz is used for its ability to withstand high temperatures or its transparency in certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. In some applications, especially some storage bottles, darkened brown glass is used to keep out much of the outside light so that the effect of light on the contents inside is minimized. Special-purpose materials are also used; for example, hydrofluoric acid is stored and used in polyethylene containers or wax-coated bottles because it attacks glass.

Use of lab glassware

There are many different kinds of laboratory glassware items, the majority of which are covered in separate articles of their own; see the list further below. Such glassware is used for a wide variety of functions which include volumetric measuring, holding or storing chemicals or samples, mixing or preparing solutions or other mixtures, containing lab processes like chemical reactions, heating, cooling, distillation, separations including chromatography, synthesis, growing biological organisms, spectrophotometry, and containing a full or partial vacuum. This article covers aspects of laboratory glassware which may be common to several kinds of glassware and may briefly describe a few glassware items not covered in other articles.

Production of lab glassware

Most laboratory glassware is now mass-produced, but many large laboratories employ a glass blower to construct specialized pieces. This construction forms a specialized field of glassblowing requiring precise control of shape and dimension. In addition to repairing expensive or difficult to replace glassware, scientific glassblowing commonly involves fusing together various glass parts such as glass joints and tubing, stopcocks, transition pieces, and/or other glassware or parts of them to form items of glassware such as vacuum manifolds, special reaction flasks, etc.

Glass parts for making lab glassware

Various types of joints and stopcocks are available separately and come fused with a length of glass tubing which a glassblower may use to fuse to another piece of glassware.

Ground glass joints

In a lab experiment or process such as a distillation or a reflux, ground glass joints make it possible to rapidly assemble the set-up from component glassware items in a leak-tight but non-permanent way. Using old technology, this was often done with rubber (or possibly cork) stoppers inserted between the component glassware items. Holes could be made in such stoppers to insert glass tubes or the ends of some glass items. However, rubber (and of course cork) are not as chemically inert or heat-resistant as glass and degrade with age. In order to connect the hollow inner spaces of the glassware components, these types of joints are hollow on the inside and open at the ends, except for stoppers.

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