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Lab basics sim

Measuring and simple separations, the apparatus a chapter 1 step names.

Lab basics · covers the GCSE, IGCSE, O-Level topic

Live, not a video. Anyone can unlock 2 figures free; a free account unlocks up to 5 and keeps them in your dashboard.

What the sim shows

Measuring and simple separations, the apparatus a chapter 1 step names. Mass: a school electronic balance reads in grams to 0.01 g; TARE sets the display to 0.00 g with the beaker on the pan, so the salt added next is weighed alone: 2.50 g, which is 2500 mg. Time: the digital stopwatch shows hundredths of a second, but you start and stop it by hand, and your reaction time, about 0.2 s, is twenty times that; the mechanical (analogue) stopwatch's hand moves in beats of 0.2 s; the hourglass runs for one fixed minute. Temperature: the alcohol thermometer's red column and the digital laboratory thermometer (to 0.1 °C) follow the water they stand in, iced at 1.0 °C or hot at 58.6 °C, and fall back towards the room's 27 °C when lifted out; the oral digital thermometer is a medical one, reading only 32 to 42.9 °C, so it shows Lo here. Magnetic attraction: iron is attracted to the magnet, sulfur is not, so the magnet lifts the iron filings straight out. Sieving: the mesh's pores (0.5 mm) are bigger than a grain of flour and smaller than a grain of sand, so each shake lets about 30% of the flour still on the sieve fall through, and the sand stays. Grains are drawn far larger than life. The beaker's mass, the stopwatch's beat, the thermometers' response times, the water temperatures, the pore and grain sizes and the share per shake are this desk's estimates.

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