Equipment Mastery and Hacks

Sometimes working with a liquid handling machine seems a bit like wrangling a wild mustang—I know what I want it to do, but the software doesn’t work that way. That’s particularly true when working with 96-well plates. So, sometimes you have to think “outside the box.” Don’t limit yourself to what the manufacturer intended (but…

Working in a lab in a developing country can be a unique and exciting opportunity for any scientist. It can be very rewarding, but also challenging as you navigate foreign settings to conduct your research. Here are ten tips for working at the bench in developing countries. 1.  Expect cultural differences Everyone approaches science differently…

There are many things that vary from one scale to the next. When picking which scale to buy or use, there are a few things to take into account: the two biggies being the maximum capacity and the readability range (also known as how sensitive the measuring system of the scale is). As both these…

Resolve lab obstacles with creative solutions with these non-lab products that can actually be very useful in the lab environment.

A variety of lab supplies can be purchased off the shelf in your neighborhood, which can save you time and money. Here is a grocery list of items that you can stock your lab with today!

Here are our top 10 least favorite ways to ruin that larger-than-life-sized autoclave. Don’t try these—your lab manager won’t be pleased!

Every research lab is full of equipment specially designed for specific technical and experimental requirements, unfortunately this means said equipment is often expensive. Thankfully there are simple and cheap everyday items which can help you with your experiments and generally make life a lot easier. 1)  Perforated metal ladle – to fish out samples from…

In this article, we talk about how to look after your pH meter and provide tips for keeping a pH meter in good working order.

Several years ago as a freshman in a research lab, the very first project I received was to pipette incremental micro-volumes of H2O onto a piece of parafilm. Boring! Weighing the liquid on parafilm and comparing the weight between 10 replicates for each micro-volume continued for a week before I touched anything else in that…

Have a healthy respect for the ultra! Here are some hints and tips for using a preparative ultracentrifuge, disaster free.

While almost all of you are probably familiar with the power of eBay to bring you everything from concert tickets to electronics to your very own Batmobile, you may not have realized that the world’s largest garage sale also has quite a collection of laboratory equipment. I’ve been turning to this source for equipment for…