The Lovibond comparator is an example of a
colorimeter made in
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales
* The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...
by
The Tintometer Ltd. It was invented in the 19th century by
Joseph Williams Lovibond, a British brewer and chemist, as a tool to standardize the production of beer.
Updated versions are still available.
Description
The device is used to determine the color of liquids. A sample is put in a glass tube. The tube is inserted in the comparator and compared with a series of
colored glass discs until the nearest possible match is found.
Among other things, the device is used to determine the
concentration
In chemistry, concentration is the abundance of a constituent divided by the total volume of a mixture. Several types of mathematical description can be distinguished: '' mass concentration'', '' molar concentration'', '' number concentration'', ...
of certain chemicals in solution. In this use, some assumptions are made about what is in the sample. Given those assumptions, the concentration will be indicated by the disc which best matches the color of the solution.
There are a number of standard tests in which a sample to be tested is mixed with a
color reagent. In such tests, the resulting color indicates the concentration of the sample under test (see
Beer–Lambert law
The Beer–Bouguer–Lambert (BBL) extinction law is an empirical relationship describing the attenuation in intensity of a radiation beam passing through a macroscopically homogenous medium with which it interacts. Formally, it states that the ...
).
Results can be approximate, compared to other testing techniques, but the comparator is useful for
field work
Field research, field studies, or fieldwork is the empirical research, collection of raw data outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting. The approaches and methods used in field research vary across branches of science, disciplines. ...
because it is portable, rugged and easy to use. If a more exact measurement is required other tests can be conducted in a laboratory.
It may be used in chemistry laboratories to approximately measure the pH of a sample.
References
Optical instruments
Laboratory equipment
{{chem-stub