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July Discount: Periodic Table of Tools Poster
If you love tools, or love someone who does, this one's for you. Popular Science writer Theo Gray spent years collecting vintage, unique, and modern tools, photographing them, and turning them into a stunning Periodic Table of Tools poster. Genius Lab Gear has the exclusive USA rights to print it.
Subscribers get 20% off with code TOOLS20 at checkout. Limit 1 use per customer, 10 total uses, so don't wait too long.
July Resource: Real Injuries, Lessons Learned + 30 Safety Tips
Lab safety talks are incredibly boring. Most researchers yawn through them until they've witnessed an accident themselves. So how can you capture others' incidents to learn from before it happens in your lab?
The UC Center for Laboratory Safety maintains a library of 40+ Lessons Learned, longer write-ups of real incidents and what they teach. For example, accidental syringe separation can cause explosions when working with reactive substances. This is the same failure that killed a California grad student 20 years ago.
These quick-hitters are perfect to share with your team every lab meeting, and I encourage you to maintain a formal process for root cause investigation and sharing of any close calls or injuries in your own lab.
They've also just released a collection of 30 Safety Tips, short single-topic reminders you can email to your team, drop into a departmental newsletter, pin to a bulletin board, or throw up on a wall monitor. A lot of them are built around actual lab incidents in the UC system, so they're specific instead of the usual generic "be careful" warnings.
And if the Safety Tips click for you, don't miss their library of 40+ Lessons Learned, longer write-ups of real incidents and what they teach. I read a handful on a Saturday morning and came away rethinking how we store a couple of things in our own space.
A Podcast That Time-Travels Through Science History
My favorite new science podcast is Inflection Point from C&EN, the American Chemical Society's news outlet, that digs into their 100-year archive to trace today's headline science back to its weird, forgotten roots. It's quirky, has technical depth, and broad relevancy. A hard combination to find!
Each episode takes a topic you've definitely heard of, microplastics, PFAS "forever chemicals," quantum computers, fusion power, even GLP-1 drugs, and shows you the three lesser-known moments in history that quietly led there. Hosts Gina and David are surprisingly amusing for a society's podcast and the production value is excellent. The recent episode on the feasibility of carbon capture is a great place to start.
Should Scientists Go to a "Brain Gym"?
Exercise gym memberships didn't really exist pre-1960. Most people got their physical activity through farming, manual labor, walking around town, and even daily chores. But when technology freed us from those, we needed to dedicate time to staying physically fit.
Cal Newport, computer scientist, Georgetown professor, and author of the incredible book Deep Work, recently posed an uncomfortable question in a podcast episode: What if we're in the same 1960s moment with our brains?
The episode "Do I Need a Brain Gym?" stunned me. And it lays out three tiers of cognitive fitness, from quick habit changes to serious training that you can start with today. Here's the framework he puts forward:
Tier 1: The basics you might be neglecting: Sleep, real downtime (not scrolling), and protecting long stretches of uninterrupted focus. Cal's argument is that most knowledge workers are chronically cognitively fatigued, and the fix isn't exotic…it's just hard to actually do. For scientists, this means protecting your deep work blocks from the constant pull of email and Slack like you'd protect a scheduled experiment.
Tier 2: Deliberate cognitive practice: This is where it gets interesting. Cal draws an analogy to physical training, just "moving around" is not the same as structured strength training. For mental work, the equivalent might be tackling hard problems without immediately Googling, writing first drafts from a blank page without AI, or reading dense literature without skimming. The idea is that difficulty itself IS the training.
Tier 3: The top-level stuff: Cal covers what chess grandmasters, Nobel prize-winning academics, and prolific writers actually do differently. The common thread is building tolerance for sustained, effortful thinking, and treating that tolerance as a trainable capacity rather than something you're born with.
The episode also touched on the "brain rot" concern, whether heavy AI and social media use is measurably degrading our capacity for deep focus, and referenced a genuinely disturbing essay from a college professor about the sudden decline she's seeing in her students.
In the future I think this will be the most important skill scientists can cultivate: the ability to hold a complex problem in your head, push through mental discomfort with deep focus, and arrive at an original insight. Just like your muscles, it needs trained or it will decay over time.
Listen to the full episode here. It's about 33 minutes to the main segment, and worth it.
Upcoming STEM Holidays/Events
Nikola Tesla Day (July 10)
Tesla was born on this day in 1856. Celebrate by reading up on one of his lesser-known inventions, or just appreciate the AC current running your lab equipment.
Space Exploration Day / Moon Day (July 20)
On this day in 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. A perfect excuse to show a kid the raw footage and talk about what it took to get there.
Pi Approximation Day (July 22)
Because 22/7 ≈ 3.14. If you missed March 14, here's your summer do-over. Pie in the break room is encouraged.
👉 See our science and engineering holidays list to find more reasons (and seasons) to celebrate.
Behind the scenes at Genius Lab Gear
Black lab coats back in stock (with free shipping!)
Our restock landed, but based on how the last batch sold, we expect some sizes to sell out within a month or two. We also just added a free shipping discount on orders over $99 (in the USA). If a black Louis or Curie is on your list, now's the time. See what's left here.
Thanks to everyone at ASM Microbe!
It was exhausting, but we met over 600 scientists at ASM Microbe and over 400 tried on our lab coats! It's the closest thing to a fitting room we can do. I love seeing the look on their faces when they first slide in. It's energizing! Thanks to Melanie and Linh for helping worth the booth! You can see us next at the ACS Chicago meeting in August.
Monthly Science Cartoon
The terrifying thought of grad students having more free time.
Science cartoons by Tom Gauld.
Did you miss last month? Check out our archive:
*Note: Discount codes will no longer be active and some links may be broken.
June 2026 - Map any paper's research universe with Connected Papers
May 2026 - Find the papers you didn't know you needed with Research Rabbit
April 2026 - Grab a Pocket card as a graduation gift!
March 2026 - Buy 2, get 2 FREE Science Stickers
February 2026 - Get the High School Edition for a young scientist!
January 2026 - Save $5 and free shipping on STEM Word Magnets
December 2025 - 10% Off Your First Lab Coat!
November 2025 - BOGO STEM Word Magnets!
October 2025 - Free Einstein Political Quote Sticker
September 2025 - STEM Word Magnets for your Office Fridge or Fume Hood
August 2025 - 10% off All Mugs
July 2025 - Periodic Table of Tools Poster
June 2025 - New Stunning Posters by Theo Gray
May 2025 - Easy Graduation Gifting
April 2025 - Buy 2 get 3 free science stickers (Extended)
March 2025 - Buy 2 get 3 free science stickers
February 2025 - 20% Off Pocket Protectors
January 2025 - A guide to our January Deal
December 2024 - A free BioRender alternative from NIH
November 2024 - Beat the Lab Coat Price Increase!
October 2024 - Free Einstein Political Quote Sticker
September 2024 - Grab a pocket card for your classmate or colleague
August 2024 - Get the High School Edition for a young scientist!
July 2024 - Buy 3 Word Magnet sets, get 1 free!
May 2024 - Prompting in Google Docs
April 2024 - Google Drive hacks
March 2024 - Mastering Lab Meetings
February 2024 - Mastering Schlenk Lines
January 2024 - Time-saving Excel shortcuts you didn't know
December 2023 - Virtual coworking with scientists
November 2023 - Data plots for colorblind scientists
October 2023 - Crowdfunding your experiments and The Lab Coat Project finale
September 2023 - How to quickly find info on chemicals and molecules
August 2023 - An intro to quarterly planning for research
July 2023 - Using AI to search research papers
June 2023 - The easy button on literature reviews
May 2023 - Negotiating vacation and Pocket Paleontologist launch
April 2023 - Job interviews and lab coat updates!
March 2023 - Lab coats affect your mental health?
February 2023 - STEM books that won't put you to sleep
January 2023 - AI Chat and SciArt
December 2022 - SciComm video editing tools
October 2022 - Career skills workshops
September 2022 - Conservation in the laboratory
August 2022 - Join a study to help scientists
July 2022 - Lab Coat Materials Ultimate Guide
June 2022 - Neuroscience Podcasts and Lab Coat Update
May 2022 - Science Learning Centers near you
April 2022 - The Pocket Physicist Launch and Best Math Blogs
February 2022 - Fantastic Physics Blogs
January 2022 - Pleasure reading for engineers
December 2021 - Easy lab process diagrams
November 2021 - Free STEM icons for your presentations
October 2021 - WebPlotDigitzer and Lab Coats
September 2021 - Engineering Podcasts
August 2021 - STEM Holiday Calendar
June 2021 - Productivity resources
May 2021 - SciComm on Social Media
April 2021 - Sustainability in the lab
March 2021 - Gifts for Engineers
February 2021 - Focus on reading papers
January 2021 - Focus on interviewing
December 2020 - Inspirational reading for graduate students
November 2020 - Graduate application resources
October 2020 - Voting for Science
September 2020 - New Lab Art Photography
August 2020 - The Pocket Chemist Exam Edition launch!
July 2020 - Word Magnet Launch!
June 2020 - Constant giveaways and learning to code
May 2020 - Time to get writing?
April 2020 - Quarantine life and a new retro sticker!
March 2020 - Focus on Best Chemistry Blogs
February 2020 - Focus on Digital tools for chemistry
January 2020 - Focus on Outreach
December 2019 - Focus on Social Media Accounts for Scientists
November 2019 - Focus on Helpful Reading for Grad Students
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