Case Study: Enhancing Science Education with Benchtop Laboratory Incubators in High Schools

Key Takeaways

• A benchtop incubator gave a Sydney high school precise, repeatable temperature control for microbiology practicals without giving up scarce bench or floor space.
• The science department needed a stable 37°C for bacterial culturing, safe student access, a compact footprint and controls simple enough for a Year 10 class.
• Thermoline TI series benchtop incubators hold ±0.1°C stability across ambient +5°C to +60°C and switch between fan-forced and natural convection, so one cabinet covers several different practicals.
• Student engagement, learning outcomes and the school’s wider STEM program all grew after the incubator was installed.

A benchtop incubator is often the piece of equipment that turns high school biology from a diagram on a whiteboard into a colony students can count for themselves. Hands-on practicals need reliable, precise and safe equipment, and microbiology in particular needs a set point held steady for days at a time. When a private high school in Sydney set out to modernise its science program, it chose a Thermoline benchtop incubator to anchor its microbiology teaching. The result was greater student engagement, better learning outcomes and a laboratory experience much closer to real research.

Background: bringing real microbiology into the classroom

Hands-on experimentation sits at the centre of science education, particularly in biology, where students explore microbiology, cellular processes and enzyme activity. The school wanted to modernise its school science laboratory equipment and deepen the investigations its students could run.

To align with the Australian Science Curriculum, the department introduced more laboratory-based practicals, including bacterial culturing, yeast fermentation and enzyme activity experiments. Each of these needs a stable, temperature-controlled environment so that microbial growth and metabolic reactions can be observed over hours or days rather than a single lesson.

Without one, results drift with the weather, with the classroom air conditioning, and with wherever a plate happened to sit on the bench. Understanding what a laboratory incubator actually does was the department’s starting point.

The challenge: what the department needed from a laboratory incubator

Four requirements shaped the brief.

Precise temperature control

Many microbiology experiments depend on holding a set point exactly. Bacterial growth is typically incubated at 37°C, while yeast fermentation and enzyme activity work sits lower. The school needed a microbiology incubator that would hold its set point over extended periods, including overnight and across a weekend, not simply reach it once and drift.

Safety and supervision

Students would be handling live cultures, so the department wanted a fully enclosed, lockable cabinet that limited contamination risk and restricted access to authorised users, while still letting a teacher see what was happening inside without opening the door.

A compact, durable footprint

Bench space in a school laboratory is finite. A compact incubator had to sit alongside water baths, balances and centrifuges without crowding them, and had to survive daily handling by a rotating cast of students.

Controls a student can read at a glance

With students setting and checking the unit themselves, a clear digital controller was essential. Anything with a buried menu structure invites incorrect settings and a lost week of results.

The solution: a Thermoline TI series benchtop incubator

The school installed a Thermoline benchtop incubator from the TI series, designed and manufactured at Thermoline’s Wetherill Park facility in Western Sydney and used across universities and schools throughout Australia. The features that decided it:

• Accurate digital temperature control: An Omron E5CC microprocessor controller holds ±0.1°C stability across a working range of ambient +5°C to +60°C, so 37°C bacterial work and cooler enzyme studies both sit comfortably inside the range.
• Switchable convection: A rear switch moves the cabinet between fan-forced operation, for ±1.0°C uniformity when plates need even conditions, and natural convection at ±2.0°C when gentler, still air suits the sample. Understanding fan-forced versus natural convection usually forces a choice between two cabinets. Here it is one switch.
• An inner viewing door: Teachers can check a culture without opening the outer door and dumping the chamber temperature. The TI-280F includes an inner polycarbonate door as standard and it is an option on the TI-20F.
• A 304-grade stainless steel internal liner: Non-reactive, easy to wipe down between classes and tolerant of the occasional spilled agar plate.
• Key lockable doors as an option: Only authorised staff and senior students can open the cabinet, which matters when live cultures are inside.

These are the same characteristics that decide what makes an incubator reliable over the long term, which for a school buying once a decade matters more than headline price.

Matching the benchtop incubator to your class sizes

The TI series runs from 20 to 280 litres. All five models share the same temperature range, ±0.1°C stability, stainless steel liner, fibreglass insulation and Omron control, so the decision is really about volume and shelf count.

All models: ambient +5°C to +60°C, ±0.1°C stability, ±1.0°C uniformity fan-forced or ±2.0°C natural convection at 40°C, 100 mm shelf spacing. Options include additional stainless steel shelves, key lockable door locks, 13 mm or 50 mm port holes for probes and leads, and BMS connectivity. Castors are available but are not recommended where the unit sits on a bench.

One specification to check before you order

A benchtop incubator in the TI series heats but does not cool. Its floor is ambient +5°C, which means it cannot hold a set point below the temperature of the room it stands in. That is rarely a problem for 37°C bacterial culturing. It becomes one if a practical calls for 20°C to 25°C incubation in a laboratory that sits at 28°C through a Sydney February.

Where sub-ambient control is needed, or where a school runs biological oxygen demand testing, the premium refrigerated incubators in the TRI series cover +5°C to +45°C with ±2.0°C uniformity, internal LED lighting and a high temperature alarm. For larger volumes than a bench will take, the floor-standing Premium Incubators run to 520 and 1,100 litres, and the shaker refrigerated incubator houses a laboratory shaker at a fixed 22°C. The full incubator range is worth a look before committing, and our guide to choosing the right lab incubator walks through the same decision from first principles.

The outcome

The incubator changed what the department could credibly teach.

• Increased engagement: Students were far more invested in experiments whose results they could return to and measure across a week, which fostered genuine curiosity rather than box-ticking.
• Improved learning outcomes: Hands-on experience reinforced theoretical microbiology, letting students visually track bacterial growth, yeast fermentation and enzyme reactions over time instead of reading about them.
• Curriculum expansion: The success of the unit led to additional microbiology projects and science competition entries inside the school’s STEM program.

By integrating a benchtop incubator into its biology laboratories, the school bridged the gap between theoretical learning and practical experimentation, and gave students a taste of the conditions they will meet in a university or commercial laboratory.

What other schools can take from this

1. Buy the capacity you will grow into: Departments almost always underestimate how quickly a working incubator attracts new practicals. Stepping from a TI-20F to a TI-50F more than doubles what a term can hold, for a modest increase in footprint.
2. Let the practicals decide the convection mode: If your syllabus mixes plate work with more delicate samples, the switchable TI series avoids buying twice.
3. Check your worst-case room temperature, not your average one, against the ambient +5°C floor.
4. Specify the door lock at order time: Retrofitting a lock to a cabinet already in service is slower and more expensive than adding it to the original order.
5. Think about the rest of the bench: Most schools upgrading an incubator are also due for laboratory water baths and other general laboratory equipment. Our guide to selecting the ideal lab equipment for a school science laboratory covers the wider fit-out.

Bring hands-on microbiology into your laboratory

Every Thermoline benchtop incubator is designed, built and supported in Australia, and backed by a 24-month parts and labour warranty. If you are planning a science department upgrade, a new practical, or simply replacing a cabinet that no longer holds its set point, contact the Thermoline team or give us a call on (02) 9604 3911 today and we will help you match the right model to your curriculum and your bench.

Benchtop Incubators FAQs

What temperature range does a benchtop incubator cover?

Thermoline TI series benchtop incubators operate from ambient +5°C to +60°C. The lower figure is relative, not absolute: the cabinet heats rather than refrigerates, so its minimum set point moves with the room. In an air-conditioned laboratory at 22°C the practical floor is around 27°C. If you need to work below that, a refrigerated incubator is the correct choice.

Do high school microbiology practicals need a CO2 incubator?

A CO2 incubator maintains an elevated carbon dioxide atmosphere to buffer the pH of media used in mammalian cell culture, which is specialist research work rather than secondary school biology. Bacterial culturing, yeast fermentation and enzyme activity experiments all run perfectly well in a standard air-jacketed bacteriological incubator. Thermoline does not manufacture CO2 incubators, and for school and general microbiology applications you will not need one.

What is the difference between a benchtop incubator and a laboratory oven?

Temperature range and purpose. An incubator holds low, biologically relevant temperatures very precisely, typically between ambient and 60°C, to keep organisms alive. Laboratory ovens run far hotter, commonly to 250°C or beyond, to dry, cure or sterilise. Using an oven for microbiology is not a matter of turning it down: the control resolution at the bottom of an oven’s range is nowhere near what a culture needs.

How much bench space does a benchtop incubator need?

Allow the cabinet footprint plus clearance at the rear for the convection switch and power lead, and enough side clearance for the door to swing fully. A 20 or 50 litre unit sits comfortably on a standard laboratory bench beside other equipment. Where floor space is more available than bench space, a floor-standing model on lockable castors is usually the better answer.

What support comes with a Thermoline incubator?

Thermoline has designed and manufactured laboratory equipment in Australia since 1970, and every unit is covered by a 24-month parts and labour warranty with in-house service and support. Because the cabinets are built locally, they can also be modified before dispatch. Our made in-house micro incubator is one example of a custom build that started as a customer request.