Comments on: Pimp my Hypothetical Home Laboratory

By: JOHN

JOHN — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 18:03:25 +0000

I do not use most of these items, as a retired chemist
I set up a small general purpose chem. type lab. in basement.

For a bench, you only need a small one for heating. Use
a 2×3″ frame, small area. Top..cast your own concrete
or use a sheet of the fire proof materiel available at
most hardware stores. One ‘kitchen’ counter top, small,
is sufficient for general work.

Shelving is much more useful than cupboards..if dust is problem put a sheet of plastic over front

For fume hood, use a simple blower motor, and a home
made fume hood from the above sheeting. A simple
sliding or lifting door is all that is needed.

A high temp oven, eg. 1200C is very handy. Use
firebricks from local store, mak4e a steel frame from
scrap angle iron, and put some of the sheet per above
around outside.

You will need to buy the elements. an pyrometer control, and a few axillary items. A
n automatic control is expensive, and you can either
make your own or spend about 400$ for a commercial one. A high temp furnace has many uses, eg little pots, etc. as well as ashing, conversion reactions,
etc.

A convection oven is good, a simple store one is good.

The temp. control is poor on this, and you need a
variac which does a marvelous job of controlling to
about 2C. A better oven will be insulated etc, and this is about 100$.

A scale Ohaus is all you need, reads to 0.01g.

My microscope is a gift from my company on retirement. Here I was very lucky to get a research
grade, and it is very versatile. However a binocular
model is good for most things. Only 100x is needed.

Glassward….look around, go to close out of labs etc

Remember, it is not the equipment, it is your mind,
the DNA was elucidated using only wire and foil…

By: KP

KP — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:49:14 +0000

Awesome article! I But you have to use that auction site LabX at http://www.labx.com for buying cheap lab equipment. It’s even better than eBay becuase you’ve got all the REAL equipment. I’ve seen some amazing deals, and you can probably pimp a home lab for even less! Fume Hood, no problem you local used lab equipment dealer has oodles of them and they hate holding on to them becuase they take up room. Dirt cheap.

By: 971 the ticket

971 the ticket — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 18:37:24 +0000

971 the ticket…

971 the ticket…

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!.