Gravimetric or volumetric???

[superstar1]

Hi, i wanted to know which one would be more accurate and why? Volumetric or gravimetric analysis.

[nacho]

I believe there are more assumptions in gravimentric,
but at the same time, volumetric is subject to human error  (overshooting titrations, washing incorrectly etc).
could you really have a comparison though?

[homosapiens]

It depends on what you're testing for... but generally volumetric since you have to get concordant results etc. unlike gravimetric where you usually only make one precipitate

[superstar1]

our overall conclusion for our Sac asks us to compare which is better and more accurate when finding percentage by mass of certain compund in a fertiliser.

[azngirl456]

Volumetric is more accurate seeing as gravimetric has more steps and transfers and filtering that more errors can arise easily

[pi]

Volumetric is more accurate seeing as gravimetric has more steps and transfers and filtering that more errors can arise easily

I would tend to agree with that. There are far more errors involved in filtration and transfer of substances. And because you only do one test in gravimetric, compared to 3 concordant ones in volumetric, errors are not reduced or averaged either.

[iffets12345]

At the end of the day, you use them to measure different things....

[superstar1]

yep, alright but  we need to do an overall conclusions for our SAC where we compare which technique is better, gravimetric, volumetric or colorimetric (we did not use a colorimeter) and then we have to list reasons why our chosen analysis is most accurate.