Laboratory

laboratory

Place where scientific research and development is conducted and analyses performed, in contrast with the field or factory. Most laboratories are characterized by controlled uniformity of conditions (constant temperature, humidity, cleanliness). Modern laboratories use a vast number of instruments and procedures to study, systematize, or quantify the objects of their attention. Procedures often include sampling, pretreatment and treatment, measurement, calculation, and presentation of results; each may be carried out by techniques ranging from having an unaided person use crude tools to running an automated analysis system with computer controls, data storage, and elaborate readouts.

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laboratory [′lab·rə‚tȯr·ē]

(science and technology)

A place for experimental study.

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Laboratory 

an establishment, department, or division of a research institute, planning and design organization, industrial, agricultural, transport, communications, public health, or cultural enterprise, educational institution, or any other organization that conducts scientific, production-control, or educational experiments. A scientific research laboratory may also be an autonomous structural subdivision of an academy of sciences, a ministry, or an agency.

Higher educational institutions have three types of laboratories: teaching laboratories (for various disciplines) for student laboratory work; special problem laboratories, for solving important scientific or technological research problems (primarily in the basic sciences); and sectorial laboratories, for solving immediate applied problems of various sectors of the national economy. The special problem and sectorial laboratories have been part of higher educational institutions since 1956. The special problem laboratories are financed from the state budget; the sectorial laboratories, by appropriations from the respective branches of the national economy. As of 1973, there were more than 600 special problem and about 700 sectorial laboratories in the higher educational institutions. All of them, regardless of type, conduct scientific research and educational-methodological work. Industrial and other enterprises, research institutes, and other organizations also maintain special problem and sectorial laboratories (for example, in sociology and economics).

Production-control laboratories are set up at industrial and other enterprises and state and public organizations to research concrete problems. There are control laboratories at plants to check incoming raw materials and finished products, clinical laboratories at medical institutions, criminology laboratories for investigative and juridical agencies, and agrochemical laboratories for agricultural organizations. The laboratories of specialized secondary, vocational and technical, and general schools are used, for the most part, for educational purposes.