Paper has served as a primary carrier of information for centuries. Its way of production has changed a lot throughout history, which results in different stability of paper from different time periods. The main component of paper is cellulose. Degree of polymerization (DP) gives information about the number of cellulose monomers linked together in a chain. The bigger the DP, the more that paper is stable. For determination of DP, the method called viscometry is used. The method uses copper(II) ethylenediamine solution (CED) as a solvent. This solvent has a very high pH value. Dissolution of cellulose in such alkaline environment could cause degradation of chains, with which we introduce a systematic error in such method. This error could be avoided with prior reduction of samples.
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