Stirring rod
A stirring rod is a thin glass rod used to stir liquids.
What is it for?
It mixes liquids, helps solids dissolve faster, and can guide a liquid down into a container as you pour.
How to use it
Stir gently in circles without banging the sides of the glass.
🥽 Safety tip: Glass rods can snap if you press too hard, so never use one to crush or pound things.
Fun fact from Fizzy: Glass is used because it does not react with most chemicals, so it will not change your experiment.
A closer look
Stirring rods are usually made of the same heat-proof glass as beakers, with smooth, rounded ends so they do not scratch the glassware. Some have a little rubber tip, called a policeman, for scraping the last bits of solid off the side of a beaker.
When you pour a liquid down a stirring rod held against the spout, the liquid sticks to the glass and runs neatly along it instead of dribbling down the outside of the beaker.
Where you would see one
Stirring rods are found in nearly every school lab. Bigger labs often use a magnetic stirrer instead: a tiny magnet bar spins inside the liquid, turned by a spinning magnet underneath the table top.