Chemical Technician 1 Practice Exam

Avoiding parallax error is the key idea here. When you read a burette, the line of sight should be at the same level as the bottom of the liquid’s meniscus. If your eye is higher than the liquid, or viewed from an angle, the apparent position of the meniscus shifts due to parallax, so you end up reading a value that’s not the true volume delivered.

So reading with the eye higher than the liquid level is not correct. The correct approach is to align your eye with the bottom of the meniscus and view it perpendicularly to the scale, then record the value at that bottom point. This minimizes parallax and gives an accurate measurement.