Report writing on lab experiments|Science
Description: The course project is designed to focus on learning the proper technique for writing a formal lab report.
Instructions: For the course project you must perform, analyze and share and the results of an experiment. You will use the data you collected from one of the following experiments to write your formal lab report:
Lab 5 Chemistry of Life: experiment 2 (in Lab Set 2)
It is important that you capture and save all the information you need when you are conducting the experiment for later use with writing the report. Using the data collected you will analyze your results and draw conclusions. The data you collected plus some additional research you must conduct will be submitted as a lab report. You will also need to fill out the attached self grading sheet and submit it when you submit your lab report. Directions on how to write a lab report are found below in both the written description and the attached Guidelines for Scientific Papers.
How to Write An Experiment Report
Experiment or lab reports are an excellent way to practice scientific writing. Scientific writing is a style of writing that places a premium on clear, concise language. You should write efficiently and without excess verbiage. This means you want to avoid using more words when fewer will do.
Researchers must pay by the page to have their work published. They want to spend as little as possible on publication, saving more money to fund the actual research. By writing as efficiently as possible they can eliminate excess verbiage and decrease the cost of publication. You will practice this style of writing in your lab reports for the course project.
Lab reports for this course project will have the following style.
Use 12 point font
The report should be written in the 3rd person. Do not use personal pronouns (I, us, we).
Example written incorrectly in 1st person: I applied 5mL of water to each plant daily.
Example written correctly in 3rd person: 5ml of water was applied to each plant daily.
Make sure to use the correct tense. If you are talking about something that has happened in the past, use past tense. Present tense can be used when referring to scientific principle such as “Meiosis involves two divisions.”
Use APA formatted references and in text citations. Direct quotations should not be used in lab reports. Any information that is not common knowledge needs to be cited. When in doubt, cite it. Failure to cite information can be plagiarism. For more information on what constitutes plagiarism go here. If you need to review APA formatting for references and citations go here and scroll down to the bottom of the page (citation examples section). Your lab report will be evaluated for originality using TurnitIn.
The experiment/lab report should be organized into the following sections: Title, Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Literature Cited. Details about each section are found below and in the attached resource.
The title of the experiment/lab report should be descriptive. It should state what you are studying and what variable was manipulated. It should be on a separate title page that includes the students name, course section and date.
The abstract is a one paragraph summary of the entire lab report. It should state the purpose of the study, what was done, what was found and what was concluded. Even though it goes at the beginning of the report, you should write this after you have completed the entire lab report.
The introduction section of the report should define the topic and explain its importance. It should share some background information related to the research that you used to help you design your experiment as well as state the research question and your hypothesis (see details in attached Guideline document). It should me no longer than 1 page in length. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE IN TEXT CITATIONS HERE!
The methods section should explain how the experiment was conducted. It should not be a list or bullets but should be written in a narrative format. Include only the details that are necessary to replicate the experiment and should explain why the procedure was done. This section should be written in the past tense and should not discuss any results. You need to include a picture that includes your name, the date and your experiment set up in action in the methods section.
The results section should explain the results of the experiment without interpretation or comment. It should be used to summarize general trends. If multiple experiments were conducted each should have a separate paragraph explaining the results. Graphs and tables should be used if appropriate but not as a substitute for a written explanation. Make sure that graphs and tables have a description that would allow the reader to understand the graphic even if they could not see the graphic.
Example of incorrect table/graphic description: Table 1. Bacteria counts and water level for the Blackwater River
Example of correct table/graphic description: Table 1. Bacteria counts and water level for the Blackwater River in the summer of 2015. Bacteria were sampled using 3 point cross sections along a 10 mile stretch of the Blackwater River. Samples show that as water level decrease so do bacteria counts. During higher flow levels bacteria levels increase. The results show that the area sampled is impaired for contact recreational use.
The discussion section is where you interpret the results. You should also discuss the results in context of the overall experiment as identified in the introduction of the report. You should tell the reader why the data looks like it does and why it is important to know. Lastly you should discuss potential modifications for the experiment. What kind of changes would you make to this experiment to further knowledge of enzymes? This is not to correct mistakes but usually every experiment ends with more questions than you start with. How would you address those questions in future research?
