Science laboratory equipment includes instruments and apparatus used to demonstrate scientific principles, helping students understand theoretical concepts and connect them to real-life phenomena. This equipment also allows for the validation and verification of scientific ideas. Successful experimental results reinforce classroom theories, translating abstract concepts into practical, observable experiences.

In a controlled, hazard-free environment, students observe scientific principles at work under the guidance of instructors. Key fields that utilize laboratory equipment include physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. 

Benefits of science laboratory equipment in schools

Translating theory into practice is crucial in all aspects of life. Just as people find evidence more convincing than mere assertions, students need educators to demonstrate scientific concepts for them to truly understand and believe in their lessons.

• When students work together on experiments, they develop teamwork skills that benefit them later in life. Practical experimentation also builds the dexterity needed to handle precise equipment and perform detailed research. This skill becomes critical in advanced study and research roles.
• School laboratories offer students their first experience with hands-on research. Validating scientific theories in this environment fosters respect and enthusiasm for the subject. This encouragement leads students to pursue research careers and, eventually, become scientists.
• Thus, investing in quality scientific equipment is essential for schools aiming to nurture future scientists. This investment also helps raise their reputation by producing notable alumni.
• Research and experimentation also instill curiosity and excitement for science. While theoretical lessons can become monotonous, hands-on lab classes provide a stimulating break, motivating students to learn. 
• Critical thinking and creativity are further developed in lab sessions, laying a foundation for independent thought that is essential in later scientific endeavors. School lab experiments may lack the rigor of professional research but are invaluable in building these skills.
• Memorization and retention of core concepts are essential for exam success and future application. Practical lessons aid visualization, helping students retain scientific principles for a lifetime.

Labkafe has been a leading provider in the school laboratory equipment industry, supplying top-quality lab apparatus that equips schools to foster successful, innovative students.

Science laboratory equipment required for schools

High-quality, up-to-date laboratory equipment is essential for effective school research and demonstration experiments. Without modern apparatus, students risk encountering faulty results or physical hazards. They also miss the chance to build the dexterity and skills needed for advanced labs later in their academic careers.

For students to meet national standards and feel confident in their abilities, Indian schools must invest in durable, advanced lab equipment. This investment encourages competitive skill development.

Here are essential laboratory items:

• Microscope: This tool focuses light on specimens and uses lenses to magnify objects such as bacteria, tissue sections, and minute plant structures.
• Test Tubes: Manufacturers make these tubes from heat-resistant glass, allowing them to withstand direct flames and enabling users to prepare and heat various chemicals.
• Beakers: Crafted from durable borosilicate glass, Griffin and Berzelius beakers store and heat larger liquid quantities.
• Bunsen Burner: A primary heat source provides a quick, adjustable flame of both oxidizing and non-oxidizing types, although users can also employ water baths.

The quality and durability of lab equipment are crucial, as reliable construction ensures both safety and longevity. Labkafe’s school lab packages offer high-quality lab apparatus tailored to meet educational needs. Connect with Labkafe’s lab experts for guidance on selecting the right equipment for your institution.

Essential precautions for school laboratories

Laboratories provide an exciting learning environment for students, but they must conduct experiments under proper supervision and implement safety measures.

• Lab authorities should establish clear rules detailing how and when students perform experiments. They must closely supervise these activities to ensure adherence and maintain discipline.
• Students should avoid frivolous activities, as well as eating or drinking in the lab.
• Students should handle chemicals carefully, following specific protocols for mixing and heating.
• Students must wear safety goggles, lab coats, and closed shoes, while they must restrict loose clothing, open hair, and sandals.
• Creating a trusting environment is essential, encouraging students to report any incidents without fear. 

Teachers play a key role by handling situations patiently, offering clear instructions during stressful or dangerous situations. Discipline should be enforced only for repeated offenses. Teachers’ calm and responsible behavior models how to handle challenges effectively. This approach helps students build both technical and interpersonal skills while learning in the lab.
At Labkafe, we provide a range of readymade lab equipment packages for schools and colleges. This reduces the effort of schools in figuring out which lab equipment is needed while building new school labs or renovating labs. Contact our lab experts for a free lab planning consultation.

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You have seen them in most pictures of any biology laboratory, but do you know how to work them? Today, we will talk about how to do a microscope setup. The type of device we will be talking about is a standard compound microscope , which is available from most lab equipment manufacturers. You can almost surely see them in your school or college lab.

Using a microscope is fairly complicated and you will need to understand all the parts of a microscope to be able to properly handle them. You will also need to know exactly how a microscope works , otherwise you may end up seeing nothing or just a blur. Finally, you will have to take care of your microscope because it is a very expensive and delicate instrument!

How to Set Up a Microscope

When you have finished being familiar with a microscope, you can confidently process learning how to set it up properly. Make sure you have a clean, undisturbing surrounding, and that you won’t be suddenly pushed or your hand jolted.

Ready? Let’s go.

Step 1: Official Reference

First of all, even before you bring out your microscope, make sure that you have the official instruction manual close at hand. What we are describing here is a generic way of a microscope setup; but it is highly possible that your model may differ from a generic microscope. In that case, you will have to look up parts from the manual before you try adjusting a part of the ‘scope.

• Why not store the manual with the microscope in the same place, to begin with? That way, it will always be handy.
• If you can’t find the manual for some reason, chances are there will be some digital version of it available on the internet. If not, call the manufacturer.

Step 2: Place the Microscope

Understand that you are working with a very delicate piece of instrument. Therefore, you need a very stable footing for the microscope. Clear a part of your laboratory table or workbench so that there are no debris or objects nearby that can potentially harm the device. Wipe the area with some surface cleaner and dry it with a clean piece of cloth.

• Take the microscope out of its secure storing place by holding it by the Arm and the Base. Do not pick it up just by holding the arm, carry the weight through the base too.
• Carefully put the microscope down on the cleaned table surface. Do not slam it down or drop it.

Step 3: Prepare your Specimen

If you haven’t done it already, it’s time to prepare your specimen properly so that it is ready to examine under the microscope. 

• Place and prepare the specimen on a new, clean slide as required. 
• Don’t forget to add the necessary coloring or other materials that will enhance the visibility of the specimen. Refer to your lab instructor for directions on this.
• Place a coverslip on top of the specimen. This will make sure that the objective lens and the specimen does not accidentally touch.

Step 4: Set up the Lighting

Any viewing through a microscope needs proper lighting. Prepare that now so that there is enough light coming through the aperture.

• If your microscope has an electric illuminator, plug it in and turn it on. You may need to adjust the intensity if such controls are available.
• Most school lab microscopes would have a mirror above the base instead. Turn it carefully so that it reflects the environmental light on the diaphragm.

Step 5. Select Lowest Objective

The objective lenses should be mounted on the microscope’s nosepiece. In case they are detachable, you have to attach them first. Refer to your manual (or lab instructor) for instructions on how to attach objective lenses to the nosepiece.

• When all lenses are in place, rotate it gently so that the shortest lens is pointing directly down. This would generally be the lens with the smallest power (usually 4x). 
• This is done for two reasons. First, this way there will be enough space on top of the stage to mount your specimen slide properly. 
• Also, when first trying to view the specimen, it is always better to start from the lowest power magnification.
• Make sure that you don’t touch the lens itself even by accident; hold it only by the canister that houses it.

Step 6. Mount the Slide

It’s time to place your specimen under the microscope! The only way to do this is to place the slide on top of the stage and pin it down by the clips. 

• Put the slide in front of the raised end of the clip and push it inwards so that the specimen is directly over the aperture and under the objective, being lit from below. 
• Use the adjustment screws on the stage (if any) to precisely place the specimen’s viewable space (no larger than a dot) right under the objective lens.

Step 7. View the Specimen

Now you can see the specimen through the scope! The enlarged image is being created by the objective and oculus lenses working together, looking at the specimen right underneath. But since the microscope is not focused properly, for the time being, you will only see a blur when you look through the eyepiece.

• First, adjust the light amount by controlling the diaphragm slowly till your eye is comfortable with the brightness of the image you see through the eyepiece.
• Then rotate the coarse adjustment knob till you get close to as much clarity in the image.
• Now you can use the fine adjustment knob to adjust the image clearly till you get a perfect view.

Note: Be careful when using the coarse adjustment ‒ it can lower the objective so much that it may touch the slide, and with more turn, can damage the lens and the slide. Never let the objective lens touch the slide!

There you go, your microscope setup is complete now! You can now change the objectives to get more magnifications (further adjustments will be necessary when changing lenses), and get a sketch of the specimen.

Wrapping Up

If this is your first time using a microscope, you will be amazed at the beautiful micro world! There is no end to the odd and weird stuff that can be seen only through a microscope, and who knows ‒ you will see something totally new tomorrow.

Labkafe has some very good microscopes for sale ‒ you can look in our products section to find them. They are also a part of our biology lab packages (subject to board needs). We offer very competitive microscope prices, and we supply any Pincode throughout India and beyond.

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Microscopes are one of the most common and iconic instruments in most laboratories in the world. Invented back in the 1590s by Zacharias Janssen, it has been with science for over five centuries now. There are many Microscope Types targeted for various purposes. We will discuss them one by one today.

Light Microscope

Most of the microscopes you will see are going to be light microscopes. That means, they utilize the path of light through one or more lenses to magnify an image. Also called optical microscopes, these are very common in most biology or physiology laboratories where you need to see standard living or dead cells, tiny creatures, for performing dissections, for clinical analysis of tissue and blood, etc.

The image in a light microscope is presented in color, and can be observed by the human eye directly. The prices of basic light microscopes are relatively low, making them affordable for schools and colleges. The objective can be directly placed under the lens in the open air without any special environment. Light microscopes are limited by their power, though.

• Read more: What are the parts of a microscope ?

Travelling Microscope

When you need to measure a distance so tiny that even the space between the two points cannot be seen by the naked eye, then you need a traveling microscope. It is a simplistic microscope mounted on a moving platform beside a scale. Generally, this is a specialty item and therefore can be somewhat costly.

Just like the configuration of a normal microscope, a traveling microscope has an objective and an eyepiece. But the whole body tube in this type of microscope is mounted on a vernier scale which is capable of measuring very tiny distances and is extremely accurate.  

These are mostly used in physics laboratories to measure the distance between two points of a tube (maybe test tube also), etc.

Compound Microscope

The most common type of microscope you will see is called the compound microscope or biological microscope. It is so-called because the image magnification is ‘compounded’ by the oculus. Generally, a compound microscope would have multiple objective lenses, ranging from 4x to 100x power, and the oculus can be of 10x-15x power.

You will mostly see compound microscopes in the biology or microbiology labs, testing clinics, etc. They are also called Bright Field Microscopes since they depend upon light coming through the specimen, through the objective lens, to the eyepiece. This type of microscope requires a fair amount of setting up as well.

Stereoscopic Microscope

More complex than compound microscopes but with less magnification, a stereoscopic microscope provides a three-dimensional image of the specimen, rather than a flat image like other types of microscopes. Also, it uses light reflected on the specimen rather than light coming through it.

It has two body tubes holding two objectives and two eyepieces, and you use both of your eyes to see the final image. The objectives are tilted towards the specimen at an angle, therefore when you look through the microscope’s both eyepieces, you get two slightly different images superimposed on each other. This creates the 3D view that you see through the eyepieces.

Dissecting Microscope

These are used to view a small specimen on the dissection tray while or after dissecting it. They are used as a basic step to visualize small specimens in biology laboratories only.

Electron Microscope

The most powerful types of microscopes used in laboratories are electron microscopes, and they don’t need light to create the image of an object. Instead of light (photon beam), the electron microscope collects a flow of electrons through or from the specimen to get an image. However, this electron flow may be very destructive to the specimens themselves.

There are quite a few types of electron microscopes available ‒ Scanning Electron Microscope, Transmission Electron Microscopes, Reflection Electron Microscopes, X-Ray Microscopes, etc. Anyway, these microscopes are so complicated and expensive that you may only get to see one in big universities and corporate research laboratories.

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A compound microscope is virtually recognizable anywhere, with its symbolic curved arm, heavy flat base, and delicate lens-bearing tubes stacked on top. We see it in almost every school or laboratory on earth that needs to deal with tiny things. But how does it work? In this article, we will explain the working principle of microscopes. Read on!

To understand how something works, you will need to know what it is made up of. For that, please first read up on the parts of a microscope . You would also need to have a basic idea about how lenses work, in the first place. Without that understanding, it would be impossible to figure out how a microscope works.

The Idea

Primarily, a microscope ‘magnifies’ the view of something, anything that is on its point of focus. It has two lenses that work together to create an enlarged image of a specimen placed under the ‘objective’ lens. And now you know why it is called that ‒ because it is the one closest to the objective. Conversely, the lens closest to the eye is called the ‘oculus’ (from the ancient Greek word for eye).

You can actually do this at home using two hand-held lenses. Hold one lens close to a small thing, like a letter on paper. Now hold another hand-lens some distance above it so that you can see through both lenses at once to the letter. Move your hands up or down to adjust, and suddenly at one point, you’ll see the letter shockingly bigger!

The Principle

A microscope enlarges the view of an object by enlarging it twice using the objective and oculus lenses. It happens in the following way:

1. Light from below a specimen illuminates it.
2. An objective lens placed very close to the specimen produces a ‘real image’ of the specimen. 
3. This image is created somewhere between the two lenses.
4. The oculus lens looks at that real image, already magnified, and creates a ‘virtual image’ of it that is many times magnified.
5. This image is created far away, behind the actual objective. 
6. This final image is inverted to the original object, remember that.
7. The light passes through the specimen and the two lenses to reach your eye. In the process, the loss of light can be negligible. 

Since the light comes through the image, this type of microscope is called a bright-field microscope. Indeed, the final image is sometimes so bright that there is a dedicated control to reduce the amount of light that pours into the specimen.

The Math

The only math that matters here is how much your final image is magnified than the original object. This is called the final magnification and it is denoted by X. It means how many times it is enlarged. For example, a 100x magnification means that the final image of the specimen will be a hundred times bigger than the specimen. 

There is a simple formula to find out the final magnification of a compound microscope. It is:

Since the magnifications of those lenses are given in power, you can say that the total magnification will be the product of the powers of objective and oculus lenses.

If, however, someone asks you the relation between the focal lenses of these lenses and the final magnification, things get a little bit complicated. The formula for that depends upon not only the focal lengths of the lenses, but also the distances they are placed in the body tube. The formula is:

Wrapping Up

So, now you know how a microscope works and the working principle of a microscope, you are almost ready to use one. But before that, you have to learn how to set up a microscope , because that is the start of a practical session ‒ theory won’t cut it here!

Get a free lab consultation by the experts’s team from Labkafe.

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To know how to operate a thing, you need to intimately know the various operable parts of that thing. So, here are the standard compound microscope parts; we advise you to read this carefully and understand.

Structural Components

These parts are what hold up everything else of a device. They are the only sturdy parts of it, able to withstand some force. They do not move around (much) and are meant to stay solid and dependable.

Mechanical Parts

The microscope needs a lot of adjustment to bring an object into a clear view. For this reason, it has a lot of moving parts; and these parts fall into this category.

Optical Parts

These are the parts that create the image of the specimen that you will see at the end. They are the most delicate parts of a microscope and on no account should you ever touch them with your bare hands, or, god forbid, put any kind of force on them.

There you go, now you know everything that makes up a microscope. Read more:

• Working principle of a microscope
• How to set up a microscope
• Types of microscopes

If you have liked our explanation, please like and share it on your favorite social media! Remember, spreading knowledge only increases it.

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