A shaker is a piece of

laboratory equipment A laboratory (; ; colloquially lab) is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific or technological research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. Laboratory services are provided in a variety of settings: physic ...

used to mix, blend, or agitate substances in a

tube Tube or tubes may refer to: * ''Tube'' (2003 film), a 2003 Korean film * ''The Tube'' (TV series), a music related TV series by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom * "Tubes" (Peter Dale), performer on the Soccer AM television show * Tube (band), a ...

or flask by shaking them. It is mainly used in the fields of chemistry and

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditar ...

. A shaker contains an oscillating board that is used to place the flasks,

beakers Beaker may refer to: Containers * Beaker (drinkware), a beverage container * Beaker (laboratory equipment), a glass container used for holding liquids in a laboratory setting * Beaker (archaeology), a prehistoric drinking vessel * Beaker culture ...

, or test tubes. Although the

magnetic stirrer A magnetic stirrer or magnetic mixer is a laboratory device that employs a rotating magnetic field to cause a stir bar (or ''flea'') immersed in a liquid to spin very quickly, thus stirring it. The rotating field may be created either by a rota ...

has lately come to replace the shaker, it is still the preferred choice of equipment when dealing with large

volume Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). Th ...

substances or when simultaneous agitation is required.

Types

Vortex shaker

Invented by Jack A. Kraft and Harold D. Kraft in 1962, a vortex shaker is a usually small device used to shake or mix small vials of liquid substance. Its most standout characteristic is that it works by the user putting a vial on the shaking platform and turning it on; thus, the vial is shaken along with the platform. A vortex shaker is very variable in terms of speed adjustment, for the shaking speed can be continuously changed while shaking by turning a switch.

Platform shaker

A platform shaker has a table board that oscillates horizontally. The liquids to be stirred are held in beakers, jars, or

Erlenmeyer flask An Erlenmeyer flask, also known as a conical flask (British English) or a titration flask, is a type of laboratory flask which features a flat bottom, a conical body, and a cylindrical neck. It is named after the German chemist Emil Erlenmeye ...

s that are placed over the table or, sometimes, in test tubes or

vial A vial (also known as a phial or flacon) is a small glass or plastic vessel or bottle, often used to store medication as liquids, powders or capsules. They can also be used as scientific sample vessels; for instance, in autosampler devices ...

s that are nested into holes in the plate. Platform shakers can also be combined with other systems like rotating mixers for small systems and have been designed to be manufactured in laboratories themselves with open source scientific equipment.

Orbital shaker

An orbital shaker has a circular shaking motion with a slow speed (25-500 rpm). It is suitable for culturing microbes, washing blots, and general mixing. Some of its characteristics are that it does not create vibrations, and it produces low heat compared to other kinds of shakers, which makes it ideal for culturing microbes. Moreover, it can be modified by placing it in an incubator to create an incubator shaker due to its low temperature and vibrations.

Incubator shaker

An incubator shaker (or thermal shaker) can be considered a mix of an incubator and a shaker. It has an ability to shake while maintaining optimal conditions for incubating microbes or DNA replications. This equipment is very useful since, in order for a cell to grow, it needs oxygen and nutrients that require shaking so that they can be distributed evenly around the culture. Anyone employing an incubator shaker (thermal shaker) to grow yeast or bacteria in the laboratory needs to beware that under the usual conditions encountered in the lab, the rate at which oxygen diffuses from the gaseous phase into the shaken liquid phase is too slow to keep up with the rate at which the oxygen is consumed by, for example, ''E. coli'' dividing every half hour or ''Saccharomyces cerevisiae'' dividing every hour. If the investigator measure the oxygen in the shake flask on the shaker -- polarographically, for example -- at mid-exponential phase of growth, the dissolved oxygen concentration will turn out to be zero.

Images

File:Eppendorf ThermoMixer C.jpg, Thermal shaker for test tubes File:Laboratory microbiological shaker with cultures-01.jpg, Shaking incubator for culture flasks File:Shaking incubator for culture tubes.jpg, Shaking incubator for culture tubes File:Votrex-genie-mixer-laboratory-shaker-front-01.jpg, Vortex shaker

References

{{Laboratory equipment Laboratory equipment