Dilution
Dilution is probably one of the most important concepts Conservators should familiarise themselves with. Why? Well, simply because as a Conservator you will need to prepare a number of stock solutions, e.g. a 50% w/v solution of Paraloid B72/Xylene, which you can then dilute to the concentration of your liking.
While there are a couple of ways to calculate how much of the stock solution we need to dilute to get the required volume and concentration of the final solution, the easiest, quickest, and most foolproof method is to use the dilution formula.
Say for example that you are given a 50% w/v solution of NaCl in H2O. How would you go about diluting it to prepare 20 mL of a 10% w/v solution? This is a classic dilution problem and –fear not– extremely easy to solve! First of all though, let us write down the dilution formula, which is both a time and huge headache saver! The dilution formula is as follows:
\[\begin{equation} V_1C_1 = V_2C_2 \end{equation}\]Where V1 is our original solutions volume, C1 is our original solution’s concentration, V2 is the volume of the solution we need to prepare and C2 is the concentration of the solution that we need to prepare.