Glass Test Tubes - useful for amateurs and professionals alike
Glass test tubes are test tubes made out of glass, obviously. A test tube is also know as a sample tube or culture tube and it is a piece of laboratory equipment, usually made out of glass or plastic in some cases.
Glass test tubes are open at the top and have a round shaped bottom. They vary in length and width, from 50 to 200 mm long and from 10 to 20 mm wide. In most cases, they come with a flared lip at the top, very useful for pouring the substances present in the tube. This particular feature is what usually differences a test tube from a sample tube.
Glass test tubes are mostly used by chemists to store, mix or heat different types of chemicals for their experiments. Their shape is what makes them so valuable. The length of the glass test tubes slows down the spreading of the chemical gases in the environment. The straight sides and round bottom are perfect for minimizing mass loss and makes the glass test tubes very easy to clean. Another feature is that they provide a good monitoring of the content by the person using them.
Not only chemists have great use of the glass test tubes. Doctors also use them, mostly to store patients’ blood for later testing. Biologists also use test tubes to store and grow different types of organisms. Another domain where this type of test tubes come in handy is forensics, where specialists used them to store blood or other substances for testing purposes.
There are many ways to use glass test tubes, even by the inexperienced ones. If you want to conduct some sort of chemical experiment, it’s always best to have someone with a knowledge in the domain to help you. Handling the substances can be tricky and you may end up destroying the experiment or even worse. Still, using the glass test tubes can be done by anyone. It’s not hard to pour substances in and out of the tubes, as long as you do it with caution and follow the instructions.
Test tubes are mostly made out of glass because it provides good resistance against heat and corrosive materials. Glass test tubes also have longer life than the plastic ones. Some test tubes are made out of resistant glass, such as borosilicate glass. Those are very useful in chemical experiments, as they can be placed directly over a Bunsen burner flame without the risk of damaging the tube.
Glass test tubes are help in special clamps or racks, designed for the specific use of the test tubes. For instance, some racks hold the tubes in vertical position, mostly the ones used to store chemical substances or blood. In other cases, like the culture tubes, the racks will provide vertical positioning in order to maximize the surface used by the culture inside the tube.
All in all, glass test tubes are basically designed for experienced users only, but can also be used by amateurs, as long as they follow the rules. They are invaluable in some domains and will probably be used for a long time.