How to write a lab report PDF

Preview

Summary

lab guide ...

Description

How To Write A Lab Report Format: Font: Type (Times New Roman), Size is 12 with regular style throughout the text, and 14 (bold) for the titles. Margins: Normal; 1 inch for the top, bottom, right and left. Paragraph spacing: single Your lab report must have these main parts; 1- Cover page that shows the title of your experiments, lab group members, date and time of the experiment and a signed declaration of own work (a sample cover letter is provided on SLATE). 2- Executive Summary; which is a brief overview of your experiment in a paragraph style with no subtitles. 3- The body of the lab report which includes the following subtitles; • • • • • • • • •

Objective Theory Apparatus Procedure Data Sample Calculations Results Analysis & Discussion Real life Applications

4- Conclusion and references are the final parts of the lab report, sometimes an appendix is required.

1. Executive Summary Note: Whether you are writing a scientific research paper or a report to you supervisors, this part of your report may be the most important. The decision to read your report beyond this page may be based entirely on how well you’ve stated your case. Be brief but creative. State the purpose of the lab or experiment completely but as briefly as possible. Summarize the technique you used to conduct the experiment, your findings and conclusions as briefly as possible. Note: Executive summary must be presented as paragraph style with no subtitles. (it can be ¼ ½ page, max. 150 word).

Body of the lab report 2. OBJECTIVE: State the objective of the experiment in your own words and in more details than the lab book provides (Max 2 sentences). 3. THEORY: Summarize the theory which explains the lab, including the formulas that HOW TO WRITE A LAB REPORT; SHERIDAN COLLEGE; DEVELOPED 2012, UPDATED 2019

DR. SAFAA SALEH, PHD

you used in calculations, if any. 4. APPARATUS: Describe briefly the apparatus you used in your experiment. 5. PROCEDURE: Summarize the procedure and keep it simple (in your own words) and in number or bullet style. Do not duplicate a copy of the steps provided by your lab book. Past tense is preferred in this section to describe what you have done. (Max 1 page). Note: Direct copies of any portion of the lab handbook with no proper citation will result in mark deductions.

6. Data • •

“A picture is worth a thousand words”. Both given and observed/or measured data must be represented in tables. This section includes only raw data, no calculation s should be done to your measured data, including unit conversions (Max 1 page).

7. Sample calculations Provide sample calculations (Max 2 pages), if needed, in the body of your report. I f you ar e pr ovided w ith dif f er en t mater ials ( s amp les ) to be t es ted, t he detailed calculations for one sample only is required, the results for other samples should be presented in the table of results under the results section. • Compare your experimental values to reference values (per cent error) • •

Error% = [(Theoretical (reference) value - Measured value)/Theoretical value)*100].

8. Results • • • • •

Results include the processed data after required calculations, charts and plots and in some experiments micrographs. Your calculated findings must be presented in tables, and for all the provided test samples. All tables and charts must have numbers and captions, use these numbers in the discussion to refer to the location of the observation you need to discuss. The content of your tables/charts must be clear with no need to further explanation by written text.in case of charts/plots; axes must be labelled, and numbers must be presented with appropriate units. Provide a brief description of the contents of the charts, the micrographs or the tables without analysing them (interpretation of the results will be done in the discussion section)

9. Analysis &Discussion a) In light of the provided Theory, interpret your results and analyse the behaviour of your findings. i.e; do not simply state your observations again, here you must answer a key question, why a certain material showed a particular result and the other material is not? b) Discuss the significant results with reference to the objectives that the lab was to demonstrate. c) Defend your discussion with references and do a proper citation of your references (please do not use Wikipedia as a reference). HOW TO WRITE A LAB REPORT; SHERIDAN COLLEGE; DEVELOPED 2012, UPDATED 2019

DR. SAFAA SALEH, PHD

d) Perform an “error analysis”. Identify the significant sources of error and attempt to estimate the contribution of each source to the overall error. (Minimum 1 page)

10. Real life application Provide at least one example of an application of a tested material based on the properties covered by the experiment. (Max 1 page).

11. Conclusion a) Summarize what happened and what was found by performing the experiment. b) Discuss the significance of the lab objectives, especially as they relate to “real world” engineering principles; that is, “why did we perform this experiment? c) State your recommendations to minimise the errors (about 1/2 page). NOTE: Discussion and Conclusions are separate items, and, after the executive summary, they are the next major components of the report. Don’t waste time and paper copying details. Discussion is not just observations, but an analysis of both your observations and your calculations.

12. References While you are writing your Theory and discussion, you will state facts and scientific findings that were investigated by other researchers, those findings are protected by Copy Right Law. You

must give them their credits, otherwise it will be considered plagiarism. Put a number between square brackets wherever you need to cite a reference like [1]. In the references part put the full citation of these former numbers; for example; 1-Structural influence of PbO by means of FTIR and acoustics on calcium aluminoborosilicate glass system, Yasser B. Saddeek, M.S. Gafaar, Safaa A. Bashier, Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids, 356:1089-1095 (2010).

There are a variety of citation formats, the one we will adapt is APA format, please refer to this link for information about citation of different sources. http://www.bibme.org/citation-guide/apa/

13. Appendix If required, include all calculations, and observations which are not included in the main part of your report. N.B.: The Lab Report is expected to be 5 pages Minimum and 9 pages Maximum HOW TO WRITE A LAB REPORT; SHERIDAN COLLEGE; DEVELOPED 2012, UPDATED 2019

DR. SAFAA SALEH, PHD...