MicroscopesBlog: Expert's reviews, news, notes on Microscopes, Centrifuges, Lab Coats, Pipettes, Lab Safety, & more Lab Products!

When choosing a water bath for your laboratory needs, several things have to be taken into consideration before a final choice is made. There are many types of baths available, so it pays to know what one intends to use it for. To start with, there are dry baths which don't even use water, where solid metal blocks make contact with the heater. These are usually used to quickly heat small samples, where the microcentrifuge tubes are put directly into these metal blocks. When using liquid baths, however, you also have the existance of hot oil baths. These are intended more for very high temperature applications where water will boil out. By using oil, one is able to heat significantly above the 100C bp of water. These are usually used in more industrial applications. In most research laboratories, one can find an abundance of static water baths, shaking water baths, and circulating water baths. Some of the latter are also called chillers because in addition to heating, they have a refrigeration system installed and can also cool the water. Static water baths are usually the least expensive the the least agressive forms of heat. They heat slowly by way of radiant heat and are usually used to warm agar or for other simple functions. Shaking and circulating baths are more aggressive and are used to heat enzymes or break-up solids in solutions. All of the aformentioned baths have very specific uses that we at microscopes.com will be happy to help you with. Drop us a line with a question.

"Is this a microscope store or not???" - This was a a question/comment I received from an exasperated customer over the weekend. It seems that with all the new laboratory equipment and lab consumables that we have been concentrating on, we have somewhat forgotten our original call to arms - microscopes. We had originally started out to expand our microscopy line to include different types of compound microscopes, digital microscopes, and stereo microscopes. It also made sense to carry a full line of microscopy accessories such as slides, cover slips, loops, and other accessories. We let the store get a little bit ahead of us, however. Please don't fret, I promise you that more microscopes are on the way. We will soon have access to the full line of Unico microscopes. This will be in addition to the ones already available from Celestron, Meade, Nikon, LOMO, VWR, and Omex. I know that everyone wants access to Leica and Zeiss microscopes, as well as Olympus and a wider line of the Nikon scopes. This takes time and will happen in due course. Meanwhile, keep your comments coming. They are all read and are taken into account when choosing products and our future focus.

I have received quite a few questions about Thermo products in the last few weeks. People are confused as to the company name issue with Thermo Electron, Thermo Scientific, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Thermo Orion, etc. This is all one in the same company!!! Thermo is a very large organization (I believe their company is over $10 Billion dollars). Up until last year, the official name of the company with Thermo Electron Corp., but in November of 2006 they acquired Fisher Scientific and are now called Thermo Fisher Scientific. To those of you who are looking for a laboratory product or accessory that may have been made by one of the companies that Thermo has acquired (about 200 I believe) will be hard pressed to search for that product under its original name. If, for example, you're looking for a Napco CO2 Incubator or a Neslab Circulator or a Spectronic Spectrophotometer, you will find that all roads on these items lead to Thermo, even though it may be difficult to locate these items on their own website. Microscopes.com has many thousands of laboratory consumable and equipment products, but we are trying to make our pages as navigateable as possible. Just type in the item you are searching for in our search box and if we carry it (or something like it) you will obtain results immediately. If you cannot find the exact item you're looking for, please let us know and we will do our best to find it for you.

Earlier this year, I came across a blog from Derek Lowe. He bemoaned the difficulty that amateurs (and their children) have getting chemicals, lab equipment, and other science supplies these days. I do agree that it is getting inherently difficult to obtain different types of laboratory chemicals. I wanted to let everyone know that all the chemicals and laboratory media will be clearly marked on our website. There are two levels of restrictions that could possibly apply. There are federal restrictions that prohibit the selling of hazardous chemicals and other hazardous laboratory products to licensed pharmaceutical or industrial entities. There is also a second level of state restrictions for said products that applies to different states (currently 11 states have an addition level of restriction). Coming shortly, we will have all the restrictions clearly marked on our website, as well as items that are hazardous and require an extra shipping fee. Starting shortly, if you see a chemical without any type of restricted tag, this will mean that this item is allowed to be sold to anyone. We will indeed carry many types of chemistry kits and biology kits for all the amateur scientists out there.

I'm so excited to finally report to you that many new laboratory, medical, and research products have finally been added to microscopes.com. Now, you can finally order all these new products for all your scientific and hobby needs. We have created a very easy-to-use layout menu. I shall describe it here. On the home page, you will find the main categories outlined along the left-hand side of the page. This way, if you know you are looking for pH meters or electrodes, you can click on pH meters and that will take you to all the products we carry in this category. We will shortly filter these items further, so that you will be able to roll over the main category, and subcategories will pop up on the side. In this case, you would be able to filter the pH category further to pH meters, electrodes, and Solutions and Standards. Another way to shop or browse is to click on Shop by Brand. This way, if you would like to see, for example what items we carry from Axygen, BD, or Eppendorf, you only have to click on these names and all the products will appear. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you are looking for any type of laboratory consumable or lab instrument that you can't find. We will be happy to try to source it for you!