Comments on: Pimp my Hypothetical Home Laboratory

By: Ford

Ford — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:11:22 +0000

I think it makes more sense to start with the questions (which lead to hypotheses, which lead to experiments), then let that drive your spending. You might end up wanting a better microscope and not doing anything needing a fume hood, for example. I've posted my $250 alternative at This Week in Evolution. But I'm impressed by the range of scientific tools you have put together for less money than, for example, the price difference between a new and used car.

By: Hans

Hans — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:59:43 +0000

For statistical processing on your computer, I would put R (free, open source statistical software widely used in academia) ahead of Mathematica (cost: $1000 or so). For heavy hitting (novel statistical models, huge datasets) I still write my own Python scripts, but for reasonable data-sets and operations (anything which would appear in a stats textbook), I use R.

Mathematica is very good at computer algebra; if you have to do complicated integrals, or solve messy equations, it does nicely. Matlab (or the open source version, Octave) is good at numerical simulations--ODEs, signal processing, etc. But for statistical analysis, there is no comparison to R (S-Plus is the commercial version).

By: George Hrabovsky

George Hrabovsky — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:28:45 +0000

Have you guys heard of the Society for Amateur Scientists? I am the President of the local chapter in Madison, Wisconsin (MAST-Madison Area Science and Technology). I am a professional amateur scientist who has given talks at the American Astronomical Society and Wolfram Research. Your site is interesting. I dislike Efston Science as I boughyt several thousand dollars worth of equipment, they screwed up the order and refused to refund my money! I just bought a dual core 3 GHz computer with 3 GB RAM and 640 GB HD with a 22" flat panel monitor from HP for $1100. You can get a better than mid-range computer for $800. I would also recommend getting Mathematica if you are interested in serious data analysis.

By: Josh Charles

Josh Charles — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:58:04 +0000

Great List! You're missing a dissecting scope, though. That's another $300-600, and very important to have.

I bought a compound scope last december, and almost wish that I had bought a dissection scope instead.

By: Pimp My Home Lab « The Home Laboratory

Pimp My Home Lab « The Home Laboratory — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:34:15 +0000

[...] 4, 2008 by Josh Jacks of Science has a blog post entitled Pimp my Hypothetical Home Laboratory. It’s got a pretty good [...]

By: GW

GW — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 00:37:28 +0000

What about a spectrometer? Remember that high school girl who won the prize for making a $500 spectrometer out of a digital camera? I want a commercial version of one of those...

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 00:02:00 +0000

I've never done any astronomy, but it would be awesome to have one of these!.

By: Carl Brannen

Carl Brannen — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:43:19 +0000

Part of the reason my buddy and I got started in the used equipment business is cause I wanted to "pimp my lab". I was playing with ceramics, making porcelain, and I wanted to work on glass ceramics. Ceramics is a lot of fun in itself because it involves very high temperatures, and if you want to mix your own stuff, no one complains but they won't let you do it in their kiln.

So the lab equipment I wanted was a scanning electron microscope. Bought it on eBay for $300, but it turned out to be highly defective, having been cut apart instead of disassembled by the seller, the State of Oregon. So we sold it back on eBay with a complete description and surprisingly got $700 for it.

As far as fume hoods go, they are designed to provide "laminar flow" which I doubt that a home design is going to achieve. Consequently, it would be best to use a fan maybe twice the HP of the commercial one, and it will probably be noisy. You can find these at low prices regularly at auctions when a business closes shop.

By: Kieran

Kieran — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:01:40 +0000

I totally agree with you here. Building your own fume hood would be ideal, and the one I linked to is more of "Kids Own Fume Hood"-type product.

By: milkshake

milkshake — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:32:23 +0000

The black resin counters are great but very expensive. In my first job in US our startup was very cash-stricken and we had our labs equipped with cheapo white-finish melamine kitchen countertops from Home Depot. We did chemistry on it - it stained easily but worked for the purpose. (The flammability was not an issue - you dont start fires in real lab on purpose. ANd you can cover it with metal sheet)

The important thing is the fume hood: this is the really expensive piece, I think the price you are quote is very underestimated. Instead of buying fume hood for home lab I would try to build one, it should be much cheaper. The el-cheapo alternative is to have one bench table placed outdoor, just protected from the rain by some roof . I used to cook bromoacetone tear gas as a kid on the balcony of our flat (in a housing-project-like highrise)

The problem with home labs is that the over-zealous meth/designer drug legislation are making it exceeding difficult to not to run afoul of authorities - even the simpliest piece of glassware or common chemicals can get you under heavyhanded scrutiny when purchased for home use. In most juristdiction just a posession of a sep funnel, rubber tubing and concentred HCl is a "sufficient proof" of intent to manufacture illicit stuff.