Welcome to the Technicians’ Home Page
UPDATES
NEW
Purchasing chemicals – You will no doubt be aware of the new regulations that came into force on the 1st of october 2023 requiring photo ID for the purchase of certain chemicals. Guidance can be found here.
Technician Risk Assessments – We now have a sries of risk assessments for various technician tasks. You can download a zip file here. There will be more to come but if there are any glaring omissions, please let us know.
SSERC Recipe Book. We have now produced a SSERC Recipe book (mainly for chemistry). It is in the form of an Excel spreadsheet which allows the inclusion of the calculators that are on the website alongside the instructions to make it possible to work out quantities at the same time as determining the method. You can download a copy here. (SSERC Recipe Book)
Printing – We get the occasional request for a print version, particularly of the Hazardous Chemicals data. The previous website allowed this, albeit a bit clumsily, but the tabbed form of the new website, while providing a better user experience in itself, makes printing much harder. So we have created a printable version of the Hazardous Chemicals Data Pages (the 1st 2 tabs) which can be downloaded as either a Word document (Here) or a PDF (Here)
Concentration calculators – these are available on the Uses tab for each relevant entry but the whole spreadsheet can be downloaded here for use offline.
Revised versions of our documents on Laboratory Design and Guide for New and Expectant Mothers are now available
Long-awaited appearance of the (final draft of the) updated guide to Preparing Risk Assessments for Chemistry Project Work in Schools & Colleges. (It’s only taken 25 years!)
Having heard that some people have difficulty due to IT issues in using the online concentration calculators, We have combined them all into one spreadsheet that can be used offline once downloaded from here.
RESOURCES
In 2014 SSERC made available to each Local Authority, on a permanent loan basis, a thermal imaging camera and a spectrophotometer for the use in their schools (click HERE to download a spreadsheet that will tell you who to contact to borrow these items of equipment).
In 2015, we were able to supply each local authority with a fibre optic probe for the spectrophotometer provided in 2014, four Mystrica colorimeters and a cloud chamber (the location of this equipment can be found by downloading a spreadsheet from HERE).
In 2016 we have been able to supply each local authority with 5 additional colorimeters, an electrohoresis base unit from the National Centre for Biotechnology Education (NCBE, http://www.ncbe.reading.ac.uk) and a 36 V mains transformer (please note that a standard 3 pin mains lead is also required – similar to those used for many desktop computers), a UV-A sensor, voltage probe, Geiger-Müller tube, light sensor, gas pressure sensor and magnetic field probe (the location of this equipment can be found by downloading a spreadsheet which can be accessed HERE)
Click on the items below for some of the frequently accessed links relevant to technicians :-
SSERC Bulletins
