09 April 2004

How to Set Up and Use a Home Laboratory in Limited Space with Limited Time

George E. Hrabovsky, President, MAST

Introduction

What is a home laboratory for?

This is a very important question. If you are just starting out in amateur science, then your lab will be to learn what you want to do. You will want a place to try out different things to see if you like doing them or not. If you are a veteran amateur, then you will have some idea of what you want to pursue. Most are somewhere in between.

Many of you will know me as the writer of the, "Mind of a Theorist" and "Mathematics Corner," columns. Why am I writing about a home laboratory? Because my family and I have developed one. It may surprise you to know that I am interested in chemistry, microbiology, and electronics experiments, as well as theory and mathematics.

This is the first in a series of features I am writing about laboratory set-up. Future articles will discuss specific types of labs.

Basic Requirements of a Lab

There are three basic requirements for a lab:

1. Floor space.
2. Work space.
3. Storage space.

Floor space is where you walk. The floor space occupied by your lab can be permanent (as in the case of my lab, which is ensconced in what used to be my dining room), or it can be transient (you only have your lab set up when you are using it.) Work space is where you build things, conduct experiments, and record results. Storage space is where you keep things you are not using.

How to Find the Space

Having a house or large apartment is probably the easiest situation. Simply choose a space (after consulting your significant other) and assign it as your lab. This can be a corner of a room, a whole room, or several rooms. In our case, my wife and I have made the dining room into a lab (that occasionally spills out into the living room), one of our three bedrooms is my office and library, and part of our shared bedroom is my wife's office (though, she often sets up her laptop in the living room and works there). Since our HDTV is connected to a computer in the living room, we frequently present results and video to guests and use the living room as a conference room/classroom. Even our daughter has made part of her bedroom into a microscope lab.

Having a small apartment can be a challenge, but even here you can develop a lab, so long as you know what you want to do. Here is what you absolutely need as a minimum for any laboratory:

1. A lab bench. You can easily make your kitchen table, kitchen countertop, or even a card table into a lab bench. As a minimal bench you can use a card table with a single piece of shelving board over the top for an area of strength. When not in use, this can be disassembled and stored easily. If you want a hutch you can purchase a couple milk-crates and put a piece of shelving over the top of them for an instant hutch.

2. A place to store your equipment. You can use the milk crates you construct your hutch from for storage. You can also develop experiment kits; where you get all of the equipment that you will need and store it in a plastic storage bin of the kind you can find in any department store. These can usually be stacked and, thus, take up a minimum of space. You can also use book shelves or brick-and-board shelves.

3. Books and notebooks. You will need to get books on your chosen area of study. You can usually find good Schaum's outline books for most fields of science for about $16 each. Dover Publications produces books on most areas of science and math for anywhere from $5 to $65. Second-hand bookstores in university or college towns will usually have a large collection of used science and math books. The Internet is another good place to look. There are LOTS of free books available, though you will need an Acrobat or PostScript viewer for them. See my separate feature on scientific notebooks next week.

How to Find the Time

In this hectic world it can be very challenging to find the time to do any scientific work. However, it can be done if you try. Most people don't even realize how much time they have available to them. For studying, have a pocket note pad available and take notes while you have breaks at work and at lunch. When you get up in the morning, try getting up a half hour earlier and work on your experimental set-up; or perhaps go to bed a half hour later. Plan to do your experiment when you are off work for the day, or (if it a longer experiment) on a specific weekend or vacation, when you can devote time to it. Instead of watching a TV program, work in your lab. Most people will discover that they can spend half hour to an hour in their lab each day.

To put that into perspective, this allows you to spend up to five hours during work days each week in your lab. This is twice the amount of time that a college student will spend in a lab course each week. If you decide to add three or four hours during the weekend to actually do an experiment, then you have plenty of time to do experiments.

What to Do When You Finish an Experiment

Many people are content to dabble in their home laboratories and not report their results. I submit that many interesting results escape notice, because the experimenter has decided not to tell anyone what they found. There are many reasons for this and they are all misguided. It is important that you keep good notes about your experiments. If you find something interesting write a report about it and try to get it published. If you need assistance, contact us at SAS and we will do what we can to help.

Editor's Note: George and Dianna Hrabovsky maintain the Heather Hrabovsky Memorial laboratory in their home. This facility, which is open to Madison Area Science and Technology (MAST) members, is probably one of the best equipped amateur science labs anywhere. You can tour the lab by visiting www.madscitech.org/heather/heather.htm.

Created by Mathematica (April 6, 2004)