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

IKA Works is the leading manufacturer of laboratory devices and processing equipment. These products are manufactured with the researcher in mind, their products will facilitate your workload in the lab and optimize processes, so that you can be ahead of the game. IKA Works if famous for manufacturing products that will mix, crush, heat, distill, and that simulate chemical reaction processes. Mixing devices are their specialty. They have magnetic stirrers with heating plates or without heating plates, multi-position magnetic stirrers with heating or without heating, electronic overhead stirrers, mechanical overhead stirrers, horizontal shakers, orbital shakers, universal disposable disperser systems, mills and grinders, electronic contact thermometers, rotary evaporators, and last but certainly not least the color squid stirrer! the color squid stirrer is now available in new designs to make your work in the lab a little more colorful and lots of fun!

Archaeologists now have endless selections of digital microscopes that will assist them in examining methods of ancient textile production in order to gain insight into an ancient culture that has long passed into the shadows of our time. Although archaeological discoveries have produced findings such as, paintings, mosaics, and vases representing the craft of weaving, as well as the actual implements used in the trade, it is the textiles themselves that bring the most joy to any textile specialist. Clothing and other textiles are of great significance to the survival of human beings. Even in the height of the Roman period textiles enjoyed a key role in society. Everybody, from emperors to slaves wore some form of clothing and used household fabrics for every day purposes. The digital microscope not only magnifies objects to levels that would be unimaginable decades ago, it allows the magnified images of those objects to be saved in digital format, for closer examination, printing, and preserving. The digital microscope ensures that whatever shows up beneath its lens can be interpreted by more than a single pair of eyes, and have a much higher chance of being accurately recorded. Thus being an excellent choice of microscope for the Archaeologist. Some highly recommended digitial microscope brands include, Nikon, VWR Vistavision, Motic, and LOMO.

Searching for a benchtop centrifuge can be time consuming as well as frustrating when considering you probably needed it several months ago, right? Some questions to ask yourself prior to ordering. What are you spinning? How fast do you need it to spin? Will you require a refrigerated centrifuge or a non-refrigerated centrifuge? What rotor will you need? a fixed angle rotor, a swing bucket rotor? A rotor with 4 round buckets for conical tubes or round bottom centrifuge tubes? Then what accessories will you need? An adapter? What size adapter? An aerosol tight lid? what about centrifuge tubes? Because there are many individual applications most centrifuge units DO NOT come as complete units. Remember to ask prior to purchasing a centrifuge if it comes with everything that you are going to need to operate the unit as a whole. Some familiar centrifuge brands are, Eppendorf, Beckman Coulter, and Thermo Scientific.

Noncontact (IR) infrared thermometers use infrared technology to quickly and conveniently measure the surface temperature of objects. They provide fast temperature readings without physically touching the object. You simply aim, pull the trigger and read the temperature on the LCD display. Lightweight, compact, and easy-to-use, IR thermometers can safely measure hot, hazardous, or hard-to-reach surfaces without contaminating or damaging the object. Also, infrared thermometers can provide several readings per second, as compared to contact methods where each measurement can take several minutes. IR thermometers capture the invisible infrared energy naturally emitted from all objects. Infrared radiation is part of the electromagnetic spectrum which includes radio waves, microwaves, visible light, ultraviolet, gamma, and X-rays. Infrared falls between the visible light of the spectrum and radio waves. Infrared wavelengths are usually expressed in microns with the infrared spectrum extending from 0.7 microns to 1000 microns. In practice, the 0.7 to 14 micron band is used for IR temperature measurement. Most infrared thermometers come calibrated and traceable to NIST, National Institute of Standards and Technologies Control Company is a manufacture of IR Thermometers.

The center to center distance between the pupils of your eyes when focussed at normal reading distance (approximately 16 inches or 40 millimeters) describes your interpupillary distance or IPD. In microscopy, this physical attribute must be accomodated to realize the greatest image potential when using a microscope fitted with a binocular (or trinocular) head. There are two critical issues that need to be understood. First, there is a significant difference in IPD between individuals. Variances can typically range from 45-75 millimeters and about 95% of the population has been noted to fall in the 55-72 millimeter range. A microscope head must adjust for these anatomical differences so that there is coincidence between the images formed by the right eye and the left eye. This is exactly the same issue that must be addressed when one is being fitted for eyeglasses. If this condition is not met, not only are the images unclear if visible at all, but nausea to varying degress is experienced as the eyes try to accomodate for this disparity. Long term microscope use under these circumstances becomes difficult if not impossible. Additionally, if the microscope is used to make quantitative measurements, differences in IPD must be compensated for in order for the results to be both reliable and reproducible. This is easily accomplished with a Seidentopf type head, because the IPD adjusment is accomplished without changing the image path length and thus the magnification (i.e. artifact size) of the sample being examined. A well designed, well built modern microscope will almost certainly employ the Seidentopf design. NIKON, UNICO and KONUS all offer binocular and trinocular microscopes that incorporate Seidentopf viewing heads.

There are many forms of Safety Wear and Safety Apparel for many different types of safety situations, ear protection such as earmuffs and earplugs for noise reduction, N95 disposable respirators for sanding and woodworking, reusable respirators for applying toxic products such as paint or pesticides, hard hats for construction and warehouse areas, welding helmets and welding goggles for eye protection, safety goggles and safety eyewear for general eye protection, and laboratory Safety products for protection from blood, and chemicals. There are many different industries that require specific safety wear in order to operate their businesses and meet ANSI and NIOSH protection standards. Some examples are, Airports, Construction sites, Warehouses, Laboratories, Research facilities, Hospitals, and Family residences. You can find a use for safety wear in almost all places we work in. Some of the familiar brands of safety wear and safety products are, Sperian, Pyramex, North Safety Products, Bacou-Dalloz, Moldex, White Swan, and Howard Leight.