The pipet used for transferring the pickle juice to the flask was dirty and consequentially some of the pickle juice stuck to the inside of the pipet and was not analyzed. Would the determined percentage of acetic acid in the food sample be higher or lower due to this error? Explain
The determined percentage of acetic acid in the food sample would be lower due to this error.
When the dirty pipette is used to transfer the pickle juice to the flask, some of the juice sticks to the inside of the pipette and is not transferred to the flask. As a result, the actual amount of pickle juice, and therefore the amount of acetic acid, in the flask is less than the intended amount. This leads to a lower concentration of acetic acid in the analyzed sample.
In percentage terms, the percentage of acetic acid is calculated by dividing the amount of acetic acid by the total amount of the sample. Since there is less acetic acid in the sample due to the error in transferring all of the pickle juice, the calculated percentage of acetic acid will be lower.