A BRIEF NOTE ON WRITING LABORATORY REPORTS

The importance of a clear report of a laboratory experience cannot be overemphasized.  A written report provides the experimenter in the laboratory an opportunity to review and evaluate what was done in an experiment.  It provides a potential reader an opportunity to learn something about the subject of the experiment as well as the quality of work done by the experimenter.  There are few positions of employment that do not require report writing of some kind.  An individual's competence and capabilities may well be judged on the quality of a written report.  Thus, this report must accurately reflect the work that was done and the results that were obtained.

Following are some suggested items that should be considered when writing any report.

• APPEARANCE

          This is the first thing to attract the attention of a reader.  A report should look like something that a reader would want to read. 
          This means that:

it has not been torn out of a spiral notebook;
          it is not dog-eared;
          it is not written in pencil;
          it looks like you cared about what you were doing;
          in general, it looks neat and is readable.

• TITLE

          One line - descriptive

• INTRODUCTION

          Brief and Concise:  What did you do; why did you do it; how did you do it; what did you do it with?

• CONTENT

Original data (signed by instructor before leaving lab)
           Spreadsheet worksheet (if appropriate)
           All graphs (if appropriate)
           Written analysis and conclusion, including answers to question in complete sentences

• ANALYSIS OF DATA

This is the most important part of any experiment; without this, there was really no experiment.  Analysis includes a careful discussion of what you did with the data you gathered and what these data tell you about the experiment.  Show any formulas you may have used and any substitutions into them.  If you drew graphs, this analysis would include any equation obtained of a straight line graph and a discussion of the relationship between the two variables (following the discussion of graphing and the graphing hints).  If the plot of your data does not give you a straight line, what do you need to do to obtain a straight line?  This graph (and its analysis) would also be included.  Finally, a clear and concise discussion of what all this tells you about your experiment.  Avoid redundancy and repetition.

• CONCLUSION

           Alone, your graphs do not constitute an analysis of your data, not does the completion of your analysis of them.  A brief, but comprehensive, summary and discussion of the final results is essential.  Sometimes this is the only thing that a potential reader may look at.  Assume the reader knows nothing of what you have done.  You are to help him/her understand this.

In general, your report will follow the rules of good writing that you practiced in freshman English.  Your report will help you to understand better what you did in the experiment.  It will be interesting and informative to someone, who knows nothing about what you did, who will read it.  At this point you are ready to return to the "Appearance" and check anything that you may have omitted.

A laboratory report should not take ten hours to write.  If you have planned your experiment before beginning to gather data, you should have simplified its writing.  Take notes as you go along.  Be sure you know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what you will do when you are finished.  The analysis of data should always begin before you leave the laboratory.  Why?  An acceptable report should usually be completed in two to four hours (give or take a little depending on the experiment).  The written amount (excluding tables of data and graphs) should probably not be much longer than two to three pages (about 500 to 1000 words).