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Title Page with Abstract nn
If you want to design a report cover with a creative image relevant to the experiment, that’s fine. It’s also perfectly fine to keep it plain. At a minimum, you must include the title of the experiment, your name (put partner names in parentheses), the weekday & date of the experiment. ** Partner name is Naomin*Put the Abstract in a box like this.nnII.
Introductionn You MUST must must make the first sentence of this section your Purpose statement. I will be reading your first sentence very closely, and if it is not clearly about the purpose of the experiment, you will lose 5 points right there. It is necessary to focus tightly on what we are trying to discover, verify, learn etc. This will give your Introduction, one of the more important sections of the report, a very good start, as it directs you exactly what to write next. nBut, in my experience, what do people tend to want to do instead of what I want? n Sometimes they focus on some tiny aspect of the procedure right off the bat, and get bogged down, running out of steam before getting to the actual Goal. Or they might attempt to write a whole dissertation (heavily borrowed from Wikipedia) on the theory the lab deals with (save that energy for your tutorial). At any rate, they get stuck with some form of Writer’s Block; by simply stating the purpose of the experiment, you can get your first major line written quickly. What could be better than that? n Again, what I don’t want to see here is everything the Web says about this general topic. This would be a clear example of plagiarism anyway! Likewise, do not waste time typing everything I wrote in as your introduction. That is just plagiarism again. You are being forced to process what you did and why. No matter how many pages of stuff you write (or worse, cut and paste), it will get heavy deductions if it misses the key issues of OUR EXPERIMENT. n Without getting bogged down ahead of time about the Procedure followed, you will show why this experiment should help us address the purpose laid out in your very first sentence. This section, which can get long, also should set the background of your experiment. What Law(s) are being used/tested? Use your best judgment if there is a strange new term (like hydrates) that should be explained. If there is a chemical reaction, show it, since this is chemistry class. n You also must cite sources where you found specifics when putting together your introduction (there are specific standard formats for citing websites…find out what they are and use them). The chem textbook from your class can be a resource too. Citations should be included in the text, not just in a bibliography at the end. You may follow any standard format for citations2 such as this type of superscript numeral or author name and year of publication like this: (Hallows, 2012), as long as you do it in a consistent standard style. Definitely get help on citation methods if you feel shaky about this!nIII. Proceduren This can be done as a numbered or bulleted list, or in paragraph form. This section is your procedure, as you followed it. Please consider the notion that your procedural notes are NOT the same as my procedural instructions to you. There are safety warnings, teaching tips, and so forth in the lab manual that do not need/should not be repeated in your procedure. Your procedure should be written in the past tense, and reflect what you actually did. Do not simply copy line after line of instructions (I will know when I see commands to “you,” which I wrote, coming back at me in your report’s procedure ☺. Students and instructors are doing two completely different things when we write our respective procedures. You should write (very briefly) what you did for each step. n Data values or observations do not get reported in your Procedure. Write that (for example) “approximately 2.00 g of NaCl were dissolved…” and then later in your Data section (below), data such as sample masses get tabulated with all appropriate significant figures. Without firm boundaries among the sections in a report, one can end up repeating information in several spots (or none if there is no established location for types of information). n nIV. Data n Present your data in the most clear, concise and meaningful way possible. This is usually in the form of one or more well organized tables. Do not attempt to design one gigantic table to contain all the various results from a long and varied lab. A few short tables might make a lot more sense. Remember that important data may be something like: “Steam immediately was seen after the reactants were mixed.” Observations such as this go in your Data section too, but may not fit well in a table. IF THE LAB INVOLVED AN UNKNOWN SAMPLE, YOU MUST RECORD THE UNKNOWN # AT THE TOP OF YOUR DATA SECTION. WITHOUT UNKNOWN NUMBER, YOUR RESULTS CAN’T BE GRADED and this can result in a 30 point deduction.nPAY ATTENTION TO THE BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DATA AND RESULTS! They are not the same thing, nor are they interchangeable terms, and so they do not get lumped together into one huge section!! Please do not write a heading in your report called “Data and Results.” Data is something you record from measurements/observations while in the lab, and Calculations/Results are something you produce by processing the data, often with the aid of a computer or calculator. Calculations are a type of Results, and so are graphs. This is your rule of thumb: nn “Data” ≠ Calculations & Results nnV. Results nJust as data are not results, results are not your data. Remember, data is what is measured in the lab. Results are calculations that you do with the data, or some interpretation that you make from your observations. A graph is a result, since it is the result of a calculation (performed by Excel). nResults of calculations can be efficiently displayed in tables, but these are not Data tables, they are Results tables (be very careful how you label all these things, and never lump data and results in the same table). As always, don’t neglect significant figures and units in data or results…anywhere there are numbers.nnVI. Discussion (generally worth a lot of points…really try here whether you think your chemistry results are good or not)n Get in the habit of making your first sentence tell what the finding was regarding your purpose from the Introduction. If the purpose was to discover the identity of unknown sample #15, then your first sentence in the Discussion should be “The identity of sample #15 is —–.” You don’t need to suffer writer’s block in starting your Discussion. Just look back at your Purpose and your Discussion will practically write itself. After the first sentence, you go into detail as to how the results come from the data you observed. In other words, how did this experiment lead you to your conclusion? NEVER assume that the Results will speak for themselves (for example, numbers in a table = “the answer”), or that your Reader is willing and able to read your mind on what the meaning of it all is. You have to explain it in words, in the Discussion. A big part of your grade will come from this section, because it is where the scientific logic and reasoning come into play. n Sometimes people run out of time at the end of the report and the Discussion suffers, but I would advise against that. I have seen this happen too many times to count.nYour discussion should (believe it or not) include some educated guess work about what may have gone wrong. Since we spend time studying statistics, when you have found a standard deviation or percent error, you definitely need to consider that in your Discussion. Was your % error large? Why might that have been? If your results stink, you need to face it head on rather than not owning up to what you think went wrong (or know went wrong). At this course level, you will not be docked as heavily as you may think for bad results, AS LONG AS YOU GIVE CAREFUL CONSIDERATION TO WHAT HAPPENED…that’s where the real education happens. On the other hand, blowing off obviously bad results with no effort to Discuss will get you a heavy deduction.nWhile in the Discussion you can bend the rule about never saying “I” or “We” in a lab report, do not bother giving vent to stuff like “This experiment was too long and we should not have had to do so many trials.” That does not add to a useful Discussion.nVII. Summary Table n The Summary Table comes near the very end of the report (before Cited References). It will contain the BIG results. For many experiments this consist of only two entries, an unknown vial number and a percentage. Think, “Bottom Line.” The items in the Summary Table will come directly from the stated Purpose of the Experiment. I read the Summary Table of a student’s report first to get a handle on how this whole lab experience went for you. Then I go to the beginning and read it straight through. Go ahead and put a box around your summary table just like the Abstract has.n nVIII. Referencesn This section gives any publications that are referred to in the report. The references should be complete, full references that anyone could use to find the publication. All sources of information should be included: lab handouts, websites, textbooks, other books, personal communications, etc. Citations should be included in the text (most likely in the Introduction section). Citation style is up to the student but should be one of the recognized formats (APA, ACS, etc.) and used consistently throughout the report. The library/librarians can give lots of help on proper citation styles and occasions. Not every fact needs to be cited, and not every fact needs a direct quotation. Put things in your own words as much as possible. That reflects more thought/learning.nnTo try to make the format as clear as we can, we include the following lab report to show the parts of the required format. Use this as a guide to see what types of information go where.
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