About

Built at the bench,
for the bench.

The Story

For years, I had the same handful of websites bookmarked. The same ones every bench scientist has. A nucleic acid mass-to-molarity converter that has not been updated since the mid-2000s. A Tm calculator on a university page that might disappear any day. A protein MW tool that takes 10 seconds to load and shows three ads before you can type anything.

I would switch between four or five of these every day, sometimes mid-experiment, sometimes with gloves still on, always thinking the same thing: why is this not all in one place on my phone?

Then a PhD student asked me how to calculate the molarity of a DNA stock from the A260 reading. And I found myself explaining the maths on a whiteboard instead of just pointing at an app, because there was not one that did it properly. Not one that worked offline, did not track you, and had everything a molecular biologist actually needs in one place.

So I built one.

How It Grew

BenchCalc started as the app I wished I had had at the bench. Every tool in it exists because I needed it, or because someone in the lab asked me for it. It grew from a few calculators into 55 tools across 9 categories, 13 step-through protocols, and 9 searchable reference tables.

But I kept thinking that calculations alone were not enough. Science education, in my experience, too often skips the fundamentals. People learn techniques without understanding the underlying chemistry. They follow protocols without knowing why each step matters. There is no point where chemistry stops and biology begins, it is all the same probability dance at different scales, and I think understanding that changes how you approach every experiment you run.

So I wrote the Bench Guide. A 414-term glossary with molecular structures, 91 educational entries that build from the foundations of science through physical chemistry to scientific writing, 20 lab safety guides with handling, spill response, and first aid, and 45 practical lab tips covering the things you learn from years at the bench that nobody writes down in a protocol. Everything connects, so you can move between a glossary term, the relevant educational content, and the safety information without leaving the app.

This is not generated content. I wrote it, and it reflects how I think about the science.

What Makes It Different

The web is full of lab calculator sites. Most of them exist to rank on Google and serve you ads, not to help you do science. Every page wrapped in cookie banners, tracking scripts, and pop-ups before you can even type a number. Some of them are SEO content farms with calculators bolted on as an afterthought.

BenchCalc is a native mobile app. It runs on your phone and works fully offline. No loading screens, no spinning icons, no "please check your connection" when you are standing in a cold room with one bar of signal. There are no ads, no analytics, and no account required. Your data stays on your device and nowhere else, unless you choose to share it.

And with the Bench Guide, it is not just a calculator anymore. It is a bench companion: calculators, protocols, reference tables, a glossary with molecular structures, educational content written by a working scientist, and lab safety guides, all in one app, all offline, all for £1.19.

Who Built It

Dr Jason Woodgate
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology, Newcastle University

My research focuses on the coupling of transcription and translation in bacteria. BenchCalc started because I got frustrated enough with the existing tools to build something better, and the Bench Guide exists because I think scientists deserve educational content that actually starts from the underlying chemistry.

Newcastle Profile Personal Website ORCID ResearchGate

BenchCalc is made by Feedings Ltd, a small UK software company I founded. Join the discussion and suggest features on GitHub.

We also make FeeDings! (an RSS reader) and Influence (AI-powered interactive fiction).

Company Details