Hi,

How many people out there have actually got to the point of conducting their own experiments at home? It would be really useful to talk to those of you who've got as far as getting some of the basic kit together in a kitchen/garage lab and starting a project. I'm researching this partly out of my own curiosity about amateur biology and partly for the work I do as a journalist in the UK.

I'm planning a trip to the East Coast soon - are any of you guys based up there? (I'm probably going to be in Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania for a while)

Cheers,
Rob - London, UK

>How many people out there have actually got to the point of conducting their own
>experiments at home? It would be really useful to talk to those of you who've
>got as far as getting some of the basic kit together in a kitchen/garage lab and >starting a project.

Hi.

Few are doing garagebiology today. It's still rather cumbersome without access to Biobricks. If you want to talk to people involved in it the best way is through diybio.org I think. They have a google group here. And a logged IRC channel called diybio on freenode. The google group is more active of the two.

Good luck and write something nice.

-Splicer

well...my lab is resumed to 1 microscope with a 160X magnification rate. and that's it...couldn't really find any other equipment before now ( just found the link to CAROLINA on this website (: ). else than that i'll be getting a set of protozoa to start culturing as soon as possible.

for the moment i'm just sitting looking at some bizarre cell, probably a protozoa, floating around and gulping down algae, i made my own little culture by just putting some grass and leaves in a container with rain water and leaving it to decade for a week . .....ups....the cell went away...gotta go find it again.

Carolina is a good site, I can find a lot of stuff there I can't find elsewhere, but they can be pricey and they don't deliver everything to private parties. Also check Amazon's "Industrial and Scientific" section. They usually have stuff cheaper. You can pick up a centrifuge for as low as $180. Ebay also has a lot of second hand stuff. You can also just google what you're looking for and see if anyone is selling it or if there are any protocols for making it yourself.

At the moment, I'm limited to a microscope as well but I will probably get more stuff in the near future (after all, my B-day's coming up ). Mostly, I'm an armchair scientist, reading and observing, not doing much more experiment wise past microorganism cultures like yourself. Anyway, hope I helped. Good luck!

EDIT: This is something on my wish list, you might be interested, too: http://www.carolina.com/product/living+ ... est+kit.do