Parts of a Funnel – Mouth, Rim, Bowl, Stem and Tip

All 8 parts on the diagram

Show the list

A plain funnel 5

Mouth The wide opening at the top.
Rim The edge that runs round the mouth.
Bowl The cone that catches what is poured and narrows to the stem.
Stem The narrow tube that fits into a small opening.
Tip The open end of the stem.

Laboratory funnels 3

Filter paper Paper folded into a cone; liquid passes through, solids stay.
Stopper The plug that closes the top of a separatory funnel.
Stopcock A tap above the stem; opening it drains the lower liquid.

How this list was compiled: Every name checked on 2026-09-30, a name kept only where two independent sources use it. (1) Wikipedia, text only: Funnel, Laboratory funnel, Filter funnel and Separatory funnel (stem, filter paper, stopper, stopcock), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funnel and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separatory_funnel. (2) Lisa Nichols, Organic Chemistry Laboratory Techniques (2016) (stem, wide-mouth funnel, filter paper, stopper, stopcock), https://archive.org/details/OrganicChemistryLaboratoryTechniquesNichols. (3) Elementary Chemistry: a Laboratory Manual (1904) (rim and stem of the funnel, filter paper), https://archive.org/details/elementarychemis00linerich. (4) Books read as full-text search passages on the Internet Archive: for the bowl, a general chemistry laboratory manual (2012), https://archive.org/details/laboratorymanual0000bera_d7d3, and The Complete Sausage Cookbook (1977), which also names the spout, https://archive.org/details/completesausagec0000ridd; for the mouth, Magic with Science (1968), https://archive.org/details/magicwithscience0000gibs, and Inside the Food Processor (1979), https://archive.org/details/insidefoodproces0000horo; for the tip of the stem, Manual of the Chemical Analysis of Rocks (1919), https://archive.org/details/analysisrocks00washrich, and A College Text-book on Quantitative Analysis (1912), https://archive.org/details/collegetextbooko00moodiala; for the rim, an antiques price list (1979), https://archive.org/details/kovelscompletean00kove; for the stopper and stopcock, Organic Laboratory Techniques (1984), https://archive.org/details/organiclaborator00fess. Hints and detail lines are in our own words. Licence: own work

The drawing: Drawn for this site on 2026-09-30 from plain geometry; no maker's product, nothing traced. Licence: own work

How it works

A funnel is a tube with a wide top and a narrow bottom, that guides liquid or powder into a small opening. This drawing names five parts, then three more on two laboratory funnels.

Read the full guide

A plain funnel, then two from the lab

Liquid goes in at the mouth, runs down the bowl and leaves through the stem at its tip. In a filter funnel, filter paper is folded into a cone and set in the bowl: the liquid passes through and the solid stays on the paper. A separatory funnel has a stopper at the top and a stopcock at the bottom, and is used to separate two liquids that do not mix.

Stem or spout? They name the same tube: stem in a lab, spout in a kitchen.
Stopper or stopcock? The stopper closes the top; the stopcock is the tap at the bottom.

Questions and answers

What are the parts of a funnel called?

The wide opening is the mouth and the edge round it is the rim. The cone is the bowl, the narrow tube under it is the stem, and the open end of the stem is the tip.

What is the narrow part of a funnel called?

The stem. On a kitchen funnel it is often called the spout, and some books call it the neck. A powder funnel has a short, wide stem so that it does not clog.

What are the parts of a separatory funnel?

A pear-shaped glass body with a stopper at the top, a stopcock below the body, and a stem under the stopcock. The denser liquid sinks to the bottom and is drained out through the stopcock.

What is the paper in a funnel called?

Filter paper. It is folded into a cone and placed in the funnel. Solid particles are too large to pass through and stay on the paper, while the liquid runs through into the container below.