Laimennussarja

Laimennussarja, a Finnish term, translates to "dilution series" in English. It refers to a sequential process of reducing the concentration of a substance, typically a liquid, by mixing it with a diluent. This is a fundamental technique used across various scientific disciplines, including chemistry, biology, and medicine, for purposes such as preparing solutions of specific concentrations, quantifying substances, or reducing the infectivity of microorganisms.

The process involves taking a known volume of a stock solution or sample and mixing it with a diluent. The resulting solution is then used as the starting point for the next dilution step, where a portion of this new solution is again mixed with more diluent. This process is repeated a predetermined number of times. Each step results in a lower concentration of the original substance. The ratio of the original solution to the diluent in each step determines the dilution factor. For instance, a 1:10 dilution means one part of the original substance is mixed with nine parts of diluent, resulting in a total of ten parts, with the original substance now at 1/10th of its initial concentration.

Laimennussarja is crucial for applications like serial dilution in microbiology, where it is used to reduce the number of viable microorganisms in a sample to a countable range for plating. In analytical chemistry, it is employed to bring sample concentrations within the detectable range of instruments. The precision of the dilution steps is critical to ensure accurate results in subsequent experiments or analyses.