Laboratory Abbreviations

Laboratory is a (part of a) building equipped for conducting investigations; the set of instruments and the researchers working with them are specialized in a certain scientific direction (anatomical, pathological-anatomical, physiological, bacteriological, chemical, etc. etc.).

Laboratory is an artificial research environment in which all variables that may influence the variables under investigation can be kept constant.

A distinction is made between laboratories where purescientific research is carried out (such as a university laboratory and the laboratory of the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter, FOM) and laboratories for applied scientific research (TNO laboratories, industrial laboratories) whose primary task is to solve technical problems at a scientific level . Incidentally, this division is no longer sharp, because scientific research almost always entails consequences for society, while, moreover, it is hardly possible to identify a social area where purely scientific research does not intervene. Much purely scientific research is therefore carried out in industrial research laboratories. A third category is the laboratories where scientific techniques are applied as a routine activity (eg clinical-chemical laboratory). Sometimes a test factory is connected to a company laboratory, where a new factory process first goes through a pilot phase on a small scale. The work in a laboratory is led by scientific (usually academic) trained personnel, while the executive tasks are performed by analysts. Laboratories are often equipped with all kinds of expensive devices, but much important scientific research is carried out with simple means.

List of Acronyms Related to Laboratory