School Science Lab Equipment List (2026)
A school science lab equipment list for middle and high schools: what each item is for, plus how to count, label, store, and check out lab gear.
A secondary science lab owns four families of equipment: glassware and consumables, durable instruments, safety equipment, and the furniture that holds them. Here is what belongs in each, what it is for, and how a teacher or technician counts, labels, stores, and checks it out between classrooms.
Summarize this article with AI
Prompts include this article URL, WhoHasGear as the source, and the free tier.
A middle- or high-school science lab needs four families of equipment: glassware and basic apparatus, durable instruments, safety equipment, and the furniture that holds them. An inventory has to cover all four, because the items that go missing fastest are the cheap ones nobody counted.
This list is for the person who owns the lab — a science teacher, a department head, or a lab technician. Each section says what the equipment is for and roughly what quantity a secondary lab holds. The second half covers what published lists skip: numbering, labelling, storing, and checking out equipment when classrooms share one stockroom.
What counts as school science lab equipment
Most published lab lists are organised by subject, with physics, chemistry, and biology on separate pages and quantities written for one supplier package. Organising by category is more useful for a count, because you walk one cupboard at a time.
Mathematics labs, geography labs, and STEM or robotics kits fall outside this list. The first two are separate rooms with their own apparatus, and a kit is a container with a component list, tracked as a box.
- Glassware and basic apparatus — beakers, flasks, test tubes, cylinders, funnels, plus the racks and brushes that clean them.
- Durable instruments — microscopes, balances, meters, power supplies, hot plates. Serial numbers, so individual IDs.
- Safety equipment — goggles, aprons, gloves, eyewash, shower, extinguisher, spill kit, fume hood. Checked on a schedule.
- Furniture and fixtures — benches, sinks, gas taps, chemical store, cupboards. Fixed, but they belong on the insurance schedule.
Glassware and basic chemistry apparatus
Glassware makes up most of a chemistry inventory by piece count and most of the loss. It breaks, it migrates into other rooms, and it gathers at the back of a cupboard. Count it by size: a 250 ml beaker and a 600 ml beaker are not interchangeable.
- Beakers — 250 ml and 400 ml in the largest quantities, plus 100 ml and 600 ml. The workhorse, and the most chipped.
- Conical (Erlenmeyer) flasks — 100 ml, 250 ml, and 500 ml, built for swirling and titrating without splashing.
- Volumetric flasks — one of each size your scheme of work needs, calibrated to hold an exact volume.
- Test tubes and boiling tubes — a few dozen per teaching lab, one rack per bench.
- Measuring cylinders — 10 ml, 50 ml, 100 ml, and 250 ml; thin-necked plastic below senior level.
- Pipettes and burettes — one burette per titration station.
- Funnels, filter paper, and glass rods — near-consumables; count by box.
- Watch glasses, evaporating dishes, and crucibles — with lids and tongs, for heating solids.
- Reagent and wash bottles — one set per bench, plus distilled water bottles relabelled weekly.
- Brushes, test tube racks, and drying racks — the cleaning kit glassware depends on.
Measuring, heating, and weighing equipment
This is where a lab’s insured value concentrates, and where individual IDs and serial numbers earn their place. Most of it is portable, and one missing power supply can cancel a practical.
- Balances — a precision balance reading to 0.01 g for classwork, and an analytical balance only where the course needs one.
- Hot plates and magnetic stirrers — the safer substitute for open flame below senior level.
- Bunsen burners, tubing, and gas taps — one per bench position, one spare for demonstrations.
- Tripods, gauze, and heat-proof mats — cheap, and first to go missing.
- Thermometers and pH meters — probes stored wet in buffer solution, with an initialled calibration log.
- Timers and stopwatches — by class set, or a physics practical becomes a demonstration.
- Multimeters, ammeters, and voltmeters with leads — leads fail far more often than meters.
Biology: microscopes, slides, and models
Microscopes are the most valuable portable item in a secondary lab and the one most often damaged by being carried between rooms one-handed. Give every one a number, keep it in its dust cover, and record condition at issue.
- Compound microscopes — one per pair of students, model and serial recorded, stored upright in a locked cupboard.
- Slides, coverslips, and slide boxes — consumables; count by box.
- Prepared slide sets — tracked as a unit, since one missing slide spoils the set.
- Microscope lamps and spare bulbs — the component that makes a whole microscope useless.
- Dissection kits — trays, scalpels, forceps, and pins, one per station, with a sharp count.
- Petri dishes, specimen bottles, and hand lenses — plastic preferred below senior level.
- Anatomical models — torso, heart, eye, skeleton, and cell models. High value, easy to damage.
Physics: mechanics, electricity, and optics
Physics kit is durable and expensive, which is a bad combination: it lasts long enough to be taken for granted, and it costs enough that a missing set becomes a budget event. Most of it leaves the lab for demonstrations elsewhere.
- Trolleys, ramps, and stop clocks — one set per bench group for mechanics practicals.
- Pulleys, mass sets, and spring balances — mass sets are the classic slow leak; count the box.
- Power supplies, cells, and holders — with the electrical safety check your district requires.
- Multimeters, ammeters, and voltmeters, with spare leads on the shelf.
- Rheostats, resistance boxes, and component boards.
- Optics kit — ray boxes, prisms, lenses, mirrors, an optical bench. Lenses scratch, so they live in cases.
- Sound kit — tuning forks and signal generators where the scheme of work uses them.
Safety equipment: present, working, and checked on a schedule
Safety equipment is the part of the list where a count is not enough. Some of it must be tested on a fixed schedule, and the written record of that testing is what an inspection asks to see.
- Chemical-splash goggles — NSTA’s guidance is that eye protection is required in all science classes with chemical, biological, or physical hazards, elementary through high school. Indirectly vented goggles marked ANSI/ISEA Z87.1 with the D3 splash rating cover liquids; safety glasses with side shields cover impact only. One set per lab seat, plus spares.
- Eyewash station — activated weekly to confirm flow and flush the line, then fully inspected annually, per ANSI Z358.1. A district plan we read splits it the same way: weekly testing by the chemical hygiene officer, annual checks through risk management.
- Safety shower — checked at least annually, and at the start of the school year.
- Fume hood — tested annually with a documented face-velocity check. A teacher on r/chemistry made the same point: if work requires a hood, the district wants evidence it runs at face velocity.
- Fire extinguisher, fire blanket, and spill kit — monthly extinguisher checks are usually the custodian’s job; the spill kit belongs to the lab.
- Lab coats or aprons, nitrile gloves, and face shields — stocked per seat, face shields for demonstrations rather than worn alone.
- First aid kit and chemical neutraliser — out of casual student reach, and known to every adult in the room.
Chemical storage: the flammables cabinet and the rest of the cupboard
Chemical storage is the most audited part of lab management, and the commonest finding is not a missing cabinet. It is a chemical sitting in the wrong one.
OSHA’s laboratory standard, 29 CFR 1910.1450, requires a written Chemical Hygiene Plan for any lab using hazardous chemicals, covering storage, labelling and safety data sheets, fume hoods, PPE, spill response, and waste. Flammable limits come from 29 CFR 1910.106: up to 25 gallons outside an approved cabinet, up to 60 gallons per cabinet, and no more than three cabinets per fire area.
- Flammables — alcohol, acetone, solvents — in an approved NFPA 30 cabinet, away from ignition sources.
- Corrosive acids — in their own corrosion-resistant cabinet, never beside bases, cyanides, or active metals.
- Oxidizers — away from flammables, organics, and reducing agents.
- Highly toxic chemicals and heavy-metal salts — in a dedicated, lockable poison cabinet.
- Everything labelled, secondary containers included, with safety data sheets accessible to staff.
- Water-reactive chemicals — in a separate, dry, water-tight cabinet.
- Stock quantities counted and dated, because quantity per cabinet is what a fire inspection measures.
Furniture and fixtures a lab has to have
Furniture rarely appears on an equipment list, which is why it is so often missing from an insurance schedule.
- Laboratory benches — resistant to spills and chemicals, sized to your safety code.
- Demonstration bench — the teacher position with the gas, power, and sink demonstrations need.
- Sinks and wash area — with a tap tall enough to fill a 1 litre cylinder.
- Gas taps and an isolation valve — one per bench position, one shut-off every adult knows.
- Chemical store — lockable, off limits to students, shelving secured to the wall.
- A locked cupboard for portable instruments — microscopes, meters, balances.
- Marked positions for eyewash, shower, extinguisher, and spill kit, in the room plan.
How to count, label, and check out lab equipment
An equipment list earns its keep when it answers two questions in ten seconds: do we have it, and who has it. That means it has to be tied to a checkout record, not filed in a stockroom folder nobody updates.
Number everything that leaves its cupboard, using a short prefix scheme — MIC-014, BAL-003, CART-002 — written on the case or on a label on the item. Record the serial number, storage location, and replacement cost. That last column turns the list into an insurance schedule.
Then run five habits through the school year:
- Check condition at issue, not at return — a scratched lens photographed at issue settles the June conversation.
- One named borrower per item — a class cannot return a microscope; Jordan in 9B can.
- A labelled home for every item — an empty space is visible from the door.
- A term-end count, with every gap traced while staff and students are still in the building.
- A repair queue — damaged apparatus goes to a marked shelf, never back into circulation.
The per-room counting order
A full count is easier in a fixed walking order than in spreadsheet order, because the order is what stops an item being counted twice or missed. Work through the rooms the same way every time.
Chemical store first, cupboard by cupboard, against the chemical inventory. Prep room and drying racks next, glassware counted by size. Teaching labs station by station, so a missing ring stand is recorded against its bench. Instrument cupboards against the serial list, then safety equipment with its test dates on the same sheet.
The classroom-to-classroom handoff
Most loss in a school lab is not theft. It is movement: an item goes to another room for a practical, and the record stays in the stockroom. A shared set of microscopes can move five times a week while the list says shelf three.
A checkout line closes that gap — item, borrower, date out, due back, condition, kept where the handoff happens. Our guide to building an equipment checkout log in Excel covers the columns and overdue formatting, and the free tools & equipment inventory log generator builds the master list. A class set that travels with one student for a term is covered by our guide on how to keep track of school instruments.
What teachers report actually goes missing
Community threads are a useful reality check on a published equipment list, because they describe a lab after five years rather than a catalogue. Five points from four public threads:
- Order spares, not just the equipment. A r/ScienceTeachers thread asking for a starting chemistry lab equipment list (4 July 2022) is answered with “n pairs + 2” — two extra, because apparatus breaks.
- Lists copied off the internet land in a cupboard. The same thread warns that a general online list leaves apparatus unused; build it from your own practicals.
- Labelling and kit photos make returns work. On r/ScienceTeachers (18 June 2019), a teacher asks how to organise equipment that “walks off”; answers describe labelling every container and photographing kit contents.
- The inventory often lands on a teacher with no technician. On r/ScienceTeachers (18 May 2025), a chemistry teacher told mid-year to meet fire-department code had inventoried every item and segregated chemicals.
- Settle storage before buying instruments. On r/chemistry (3 October 2025), a teacher outfitting a renovated lab is advised to start with storage that separates oxidizers, acids, and flammables.
- r/ScienceTeachers, "Starting Chemistry Lab Equipment List", posted 4 July 2022 ↗
- r/ScienceTeachers, "Equipment Organization", posted 18 June 2019 ↗
- r/ScienceTeachers, "As the Chem Teacher, you're also in charge of the science lab - help!", posted 18 May 2025 ↗
- r/chemistry, "Help outfitting a high school chemistry lab", posted 3 October 2025 ↗
Common questions
What equipment does a school science lab need? Glassware and apparatus, durable instruments, safety equipment, and furniture. In practice: beakers, flasks and cylinders, a balance, hot plates or burners, microscopes with slides, meters and power supplies, goggles and aprons per seat, an eyewash, and a chemical store that separates hazard classes.
What is the difference between a lab equipment list and a lab inventory? The list is what the lab should have. The inventory is what you own, with IDs, serial numbers, condition, location, and replacement value — and that is what an insurer asks for.
Who should own the science lab inventory? One named person: a lab technician where the school has one, otherwise a department head or the chemical hygiene plan lead.
How often should lab equipment be counted? Once a year as a full count, a term-end check on instruments that travel, and the weekly and annual safety checks.
How do you count equipment that is checked out? Record it as out with the borrower’s name rather than treating it as missing. If you cannot name who has an item, that is the variance.
Try it on your own gear
$1 opens 7 days of full access on any plan. Cancel anytime.