Monthly Archives: August 2019

7 Features that Make Up an Ideal Paper Notebook

As a student your sketches, data records, compositions, musings, journaling, or regular day-to-day notes need recording. A high-quality paper notebook is the best in recording your discoveries, thoughts and any primary information. The education sector is the biggest consumer of notebooks.

To understand the enormous nature of this market, one should look at the large number of students that graduate each year. For instance, 9,550 college students were awarded biochemistry degrees in 2016. All these students need to record and present their analyses, hypotheses, interpretations, experiments, and collected data, and notebooks provide an ideal record for all this information. Poor quality lab notebooks may easily tear or poorly absorb ink and lead to a loss of your information.

This article reviews the features that make up a good lab notebook.

Why is a high-quality lab notebook essential?

A lab notebook allows you to record your laboratory findings and data. These notebooks differ from other notebooks because they have inclusions such as graph grids for drawing graphs and tables for data entry. Their robust bindings and high-quality paper ensure that they don’t get easily damaged or spoiled by ink.

Here are some of the things to look out for when buying a lab notebook.

• Sheet Style

The sheet style determines the use of your notebook. Plain, graph, and lined notebooks are the most common sheet styles. Ruled or lined notebooks are ideal for writing. Visual thinkers and artists prefer plain notebooks, whereas; notebooks with graph grid lines are useful to designers, engineers, and scientists who need to draw graphs or diagrams.

• Spacing of the lines

Many students use the medium ruled 7mm paper. Students with small-sized handwriting should use the narrow ruled 6mm paper. The wide ruled 8mm paper is often used by people who have large handwriting or grade school students. For graph lab notebooks, the standard spacing is 5mm, but there is also a less popular 3mm grid for students that engage in detailed work.

• Binding

The binding of notebooks can be done in different ways, and each binding style determines how easy or hard it is for a notebook to tear. Notebooks can be bound by rings, spirals, threads, staples, glue, or a combination of any of these binding styles. The style of binding determines how sturdy and flat a notebook can be. Staple and glue binding are often the weakest, but they are preferable for students that would like to pluck a leaf of their work from the notebook. On the other hand, ring, spiral and stitched binding are the strongest and they can hold papers together strongly.

• Paper Weight

Paperweight is often expressed in grams or pounds per square meter. As a rule of thumb, heavy notebook papers are thick and durable. They have less show-through and they can withstand erasing. Students writing on both sides of the paper should prefer lab notebooks with heavier paper.

• Number of sheets

Some students prefer thin laboratory notebooks with few pages, whereas; others prefer thick notebooks with a high page-count. If you have lots of information to record, then a thick notebook would be preferable. Otherwise, a thin notebook is ideal if you have to lug around many of them for different purposes.

• Design and cover material

Sturdy covers are always the best if you’re seeking for durability. The options you may have include leather, luxurious leatherette, flexible plastic, hard chipboard, and thick cardstock. Always go for covers with rounded corners because they don’t wear down easily. Some notebook manufacturers offer covering materials in the form of built-in pockets or sleeves. It’s recommendable to buy such notebooks because you’ll be sure that they can last for long.

• Perforations

Perforations allow you to tear pages from your notebook to submit homework or share content. Always go for lab notebooks with closely perforated lines so as to get a clean tear whenever you want to remove a page from your notebook.

If you want to accurately record your information and prevent losing your content, then choose a high-quality notebook that will not easily lose shape through wear and tear as it gets lugged around in your backpack.


Pathway of Discovery

A Student’s Journey in Science

Throughout the ages people have grown to discover new and exciting technologies to enhance humankind. Productions in soil nutrients and organic methods of bug repellant to molecular structures of the human body and cellular decomposition are just a few to name in this learning curve. As these fields of study grow, so does the need for educational facilities for the student to be taught and participate in scientific lab work. Universities are expanding their fields of study and increasing departmental staff to accommodate young minds eager to learn.

One of the enlarging divisions is the exploitation of biological processes which is the foundation of biotechnology. A student who is gathering a degree in this area will have multiple territories to endorse and loads of laboratory notebooks to maintain. As for the purpose of a biotech diploma, one primary use is in the genetic manipulation of microorganisms for the production of antibiotics, hormones, and many other molecular structures. This helps physicians to better understand how the human body produces and processes products for a specific use.

Along the pathway of discovery and experiments comes the research and development department. As each student begins their journey in science, they may soon learn their passion is laying between the pages of their research notebook. Rather than moving towards building compounds and chemically structuring medicine, their preferred path is uncovering the mysteries of DNA structures and chromosomes. Also, applying the knowledge gained in previous courses to the research and reconstruction of organic compounds.

Continuing on the course with chemical components, another area of study belongs to pharmacy/pharmacists. Typically this area of study will take a student eight years of college education to earn their Pharm.D. Upon graduation, it becomes their responsibility to understand how each medication is chemically crated and how this coincides with the molecular breakdown in the human body. Each student will usually keep their science notebook(s) to remind them, and assist them, of different formulas and compound structures; gaining new knowledge as the years pass.

In research universities there are endless discoveries to unfold. Each facility containing the proper instruments, equipment, and bio-hazardous/biomedical samples so each individual student can gather and retain information. As their progression proceeds and mysteries become solved, they give advancements toward the medical and organic economic worlds. This creates a universal connection from one end of the spectrum to the other.

When you pause and think about how the world functions, how organic materials can be reused, how the human body processes food, how some animals heal faster than others, all are connected by research. It took a student, or multitude of students, to dissect a theory and discover a mystery; and then break down each component till there were no more questions. From those questions, either being solved or disproven, taking theoretical to possibility and developing the research. At this point a single student can crate massive change for the world we live in, possibly uncovering one of life’s greatest mysteries; how do we turn back our metabolic clock, our personal fountain of youth.


How a Laboratory Notebook Can Protect Your Intellectual Property

For students who aim to become laboratory scientists or embrace other positions within the biomedical field, protecting one’s research and experimentation is vital. In an age when it’s never been easier to share information and refrain from attributing creations to their rightful owner, it’s perfectly understandable that you’d be concerned about safeguarding your original ideas. Ultimately, that could come down to the security of the lab or your ability to distinguish trustworthy individuals in your personal or professional life. But did you know that your choice of scientific lab notebook might make a big difference?

In 2016, there were 411 million metric tons of paper and cardboard produced worldwide. Just some of that paper and cardboard is used to create the laboratory notebooks that students and scientists utilize every day. But these notebooks can do more than allow you to keep track of pertinent observations and experimental results. Used correctly, laboratory notebooks can also ensure that you (or your company or school) can obtain and maintain patent approval associated with your documented research.

Laboratories often serve as the birthplace of incredible ideas. They’re where scientists investigate hunches, perform experiments, observe results, collect data, and potentially develop innovations that could change the world. But while you might be ethical enough to be concerned only with your own ideas, the same cannot be said for everyone within your industry. The unfortunate reality is that someone could be heavily influenced by your work to the point where they attempt to claim it as their own. If you fail to protect your ideas, your career could be jeopardized.

That’s why it’s so important for students and professionals alike to make a habit of using a laboratory notebook for all of the work you do. By documenting your research, observations, and other data in a bound notebook with numbered, dated, and signed pages, you’ll ensure your intellectual property can be properly attributed to you. That way, even if you have to defend your invention (and your ownership of it) in court years down the line, you’ll have the evidence necessary to show you should be the rightful patent holder.

To that end, you’ll want to use laboratory notebooks that are pre-printed in the proper page format in order to comply with patent law requirements. These notebooks should be bound so that pages cannot be added or taken out without leaving obvious traces. You should always use ink, rather than pencil, to record data in your notebook. Each time you record any information in your notebook, you’ll want to make a point to sign and date the pages you’ve worked on; it’s even better if you can have professors or coworkers sign and date those pages to provide additional evidence, if necessary. If you need to make any changes, cross out the incorrect information (rather than using white-out) before signing and dating those changes. Any unused notebook space should be crossed out with a diagonal line.

You should never document privileged or personal information in laboratory notebooks. If you need to discuss other patents or document information from your lawyer, you should keep track of this information in a separate document or notebook. When you make discoveries, test theories, or record results, you should also take care to document the importance of these findings with remarks. Memorializing these reactions in print can be of great benefit when attempting to obtain a patent. Documenting your progress and a general narrative within your laboratory notebook will be helpful for the same reason. It’s best for students and scientists to remember their lab notebooks should be treated as formal records, rather than as journals or notepads. To that end, inaccurate or incomplete ideas should not be included, as this could make it more difficult to obtain or defend patent protection later on.

By keeping these documentation tips in mind and making a point to always use a high-quality laboratory notebook, you can successfully safeguard your original ideas. For more information, please contact us today.