Pimp My Home Lab

Jacks of Science has a blog post entitled Pimp my Hypothetical Home Laboratory. It’s got a pretty good listing of things a home lab could / should have, and if you got everything on the list, it would be a very nice lab indeed.

My own lab is a work in progress, but so far I’ve spend less than $800 on it. I have:

• Glassware / Standard Chemical tools
• Bunsen Burner
• Standard Chemical Set
• Compound Microscope
• Dissection Kit

I still need to purchase a few things, like a digital scale for example, and a digital thermometer would be nice as well.

You don’t need to purchase everything at once. I started out getting a top-of-the-line chemistry set from my local science store, and that included all of the glassware, tools, and chemicals that I needed to really get started. Then a few months later, I added a compound microscope and the dissection kit. Building as I go has worked pretty well for me, and it’s something I would recommend for other amateur scientists out there.

Of course, if you do have the $5600 totaled from Jacks’ post, that’s a good place to start as well.