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CHEM2201/6201 Laboratory Report Writing

Full Laboratory Report Writing A laboratory report is a form of scientific (or journal) paper, which is an essential part of the scientific process. The purpose is to report on what you did, what you learned from an experiment and why the findings matter, which is to document your findings and communicate their significance. For any laboratory report, you will need to record the procedure and everything observed during the lab activity. Any laboratory report should allow the person reading it to be able to reproduce the exact procedure (and result, hopefully) carried out in the lab. This workshop gives you an overview of typical components.

A good lab report does more than present data; it demonstrates the writer’s comprehension of the concepts behind the data. Merely recording the expected and observed results is not sufficient; you should also identify how and why differences occurred, explain how they affected your experiment, and show your understanding of the principles that the experiment was designed to examine.

Learning how to write a good laboratory report is part of learning to be a scientist, and provides you with experience in writing in a scientific style similar to that used in articles published in scientific journals.

This note provides the details including the content, structure and language of each section that help you to understand the functions of each session and enhance your writing skills. Bear in mind that the format is helpful, however, it cannot replace clear thinking and organised writing. You still need to organise your ideas carefully and express them coherently.

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the overall structure and purpose of the laboratory report • Know what kind of information belongs in the different parts of the report • Be able to structure the information within each section of the report in a logical way

CHEM2201/6201 Analysis and Measurement

2020

Concepts and Skills: • The overall structure of

Laboratory Report

• Functions of each session

• Content of each session

Reference • The information presented

in this workshop notes was

adopted from Drury, H. How to write a Laboratory

Report, 1997, ISBN 0958628505

CHEM2201/6201 Laboratory Report Writing

Procedures

Part 1 – The structure of the laboratory report

A laboratory report has a clear structure as outlined in Table 1, which is very helpful when you come to write your report. The stages in the report and their sequence have developed in this way to accurately re-tell or recount a scientific activity and to interpret the results of this activity. In this way, scientific knowledge is developed out of scientific experimentation.

Table 1. The typical structure of a laboratory report Section Function

Title Clearly and concisely informs the reader of the practical report topic: a good title is short and to the point. It tells the reader the purpose of your experiment or what your found

Author The persons who did the work, analysed the data and reported the results (contribute to the work intellectually).

Abstract Summarizes of the report in four aspects: purpose of the experiment; key findings; significance and major conclusions.

Introduction

Provides background information needed for the reader to understand the context and purpose of the experiment. At the end of the introduction, the aim is clearly stated.

Methods

Describes what was done in the experiment. Includes materials used and procedures followed.

Results Presents the findings of the experiment.

Discussion

Interprets and explains the findings, and places them in the context of background information.

Conclusion

Summarises findings and interpretations.

References Presents the sources of information used in the report.

Appendix/Appendices Provides detailed information (when necessary).

Part 2 – The Introduction In general, the Introduction session should provide enough background information so that the reader will know the context and purpose of your experiment. Typically, the introduction presents four main points, structured in the following way: Stage 1: State the subject of the report and why it is important;

CHEM2201/6201 Laboratory Report Writing

Stage 2: Summarise what researchers already know about the subject; Stage 3: State how your experiment compares with previous experiments; State 4: State the aim/and or hypothesis of your experiment;

Stage 1,2 and 3 of the introduction provide the reader with background information about the experiment. You will have to read your lecture and laboratory notes and your text books and in some cases, other sources such as Journal articles to find this information. You do not need to write everything that is known about the topic. Two paragraph is usually sufficient. Also be careful not to directly copy your laboratory notes and textbooks. It is also a good idea to avoid quotations. You should reframe the information in your own words. However, you must cite the source of that information.

Note: When you write your own introduction, you will probably have to draft and re-draft in a number of times. You may even leave the final draft until you have written up the rest of your report and you have a clearer understanding of how your results and your interpretation of your results relate to your aim and your introduction as a whole.

To write a good introduction, there are 3 areas of language which you need to pay attention to:

• Keeping the focus on the most relevant information • The language of certainty • The choice of present or past tense

Part 3 - The Methods

Writing the methods stage is probably the most straightforward part of the laboratory report, however, it is different from the protocol provided by the lab notes. The information you give in Methods session should typically answer the following questions: i) what materials did you use and ii) what methods did you use?

The methods should give enough detail so that someone else can duplicate your experiment. However, they should not be as detailed as the instructions in your laboratory notes. Remember not to comment on your observations or measurements in the methods stage. You should do this in the results stage.

The structure of the methods is determined by the sequence or order of what you used and what you did in the laboratory, step by step. It is usual to integrate your description of the materials with your recount of the methods. However, in some experiments, you may need to describe your materials separately.

Although the instructions or flow chart can help you to write up the methods stage, they are usually too detailed for what you will eventually write in your methods section. So don’t just copy the list of instructions in your laboratory notes and simply change the language structures. You will have to decide what the key information is for carrying out the methods and use this in writing up your methods stage.

Part 4 - The Results

Your results section provides information to answer the following question:

CHEM2201/6201 Laboratory Report Writing

What did you find (your precise measurements) and/or what did you observe? If your experiment generated a set of results, it is common practice to display your results in detail in the form of a table or graph (using the spreadsheet skills learned from Workshop 1 for data analysis). However, you have to use language to introduce your table or graph and give it a title. You are also expected to write a short summary of your results, which identifies the most important results in terms of the aims of your experiment (this summary is usually only a few sentences long because the detailed results are given in the tables or graphs). Your results section usually has three main stages: Stage 1: introduce the results section and tables and/or graphs Stage 2: present table (s) and/or graph(s) Stage 3: summaries the results You may have a series of results to report and in this case, the structure of the results section will be repeated, and you will need to consider the relationships between different sets of results when you are deciding on the sequence in which you will present your results. When writing about the results, introduce them in a general way at the beginning of the results section. Don’t forget to refer to your tables and figures while you are summarising the results. The following questions will help you to summaries the results:

a. What are the trends or functional relationships that can be seen in your results (table, figure graphs etc,);

b. If you draw a graph, what did the curve show about the relationship between your variables;

c. What did the replicates show?

Part 5 - The Discussion

The discussion section is probably the most difficult and challenging to write because you have to think carefully about the specific results you obtained in your experiment and interpret them and generalise from them. In this way you relate your own results to the store of scientific knowledge. Meanwhile, the discussion is also the most important part of your report, because here, you show that you understand the experiment beyond the simple level of completing it. You need to explain, analyse and interpret. Some people like to think of this as the “subjective” part of the report. By that, they mean this is what is not readily observable. This part of the lab focuses on a question of understanding “What is the significance or meaning of the results?”

The information you put in the discussion should answer the following questions: (1) Have you fulfilled the aims of your experiment? (2) Why did you get the results you got? You may have to explain inconsistent or unexpected results. (3) What problems did you encounter in carrying out the experiment and how could you overcome these in future investigations? (4) What is significant or important about your results? (5) What further areas of investigation, if any, can you suggest. In your discussion, you will also have to compare your results with previous research. Think carefully about how you will sequence the information so that you develop a logical discussion.

CHEM2201/6201 Laboratory Report Writing

Remember that not all of the questions or the stages will be relevant to every experiment. Write a number of draft discussions until you are satisfied with your writing

Part 6-The Conclusion

The conclusion is a summary of what you did and gives you a chance to explain anything that might have gone wrong or could be improved, as well as propose future experiments. The conclusion should be short and to the point. Simply state what you know now for sure, as a result of the lab. The following questions will help you to write the conclusion:

a. What did you do? - reiterate your procedures briefly (including any changes you made); b. What did you find? - restate any results that you may have calculated (with errors if

applicable). You don't need to include the raw data, but if you calculated an average over several trials, state the average (not each trial);

c. If your experiment didn’t work, what procedure should be changed or what additional experiment should be done?)

d. What is the real world implication of your experimental work?

Part 7 - References and Appendices

This is the last section of the report. It is standard academic practice to provide details of all the literature that you cited in your report at the end of the report. For each reference give the author’s name, the full title of the book or article, the year of publication, and the publication details. Since there are a number of different conventions associated with giving references, always make sure that you follow the guidelines for referencing given by your individual lecturers or by the Journal, and be aware that these will vary.

Common referencing conventions are the American Chemical Society style (see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/bk-2006-STYG.ch014), the Vancouver Style and the Harvard Style. The library provides some information on referencing (see http://libguides.mq.edu.au/ld.php?content_id=32381809) and software for doing this in documents. The library supports Endnote and Mendeley (see http://libguides.mq.edu.au/referencing-software).

Appendices: You won’t always have to have an Appendix in your report, but if you have some detailed information such as raw data, spectra, etc that you want to include, you can include this at the very end of the report (following the references). Appendices should be numbered (e.g. Appendix 1) and have a clear heading. When you want to refer to information in an Appendix, you need to indicate where this can be found. For example, “Detailed figures can be found in Appendix 1”.

Part 8 – Title, author and Abstract

Although the title and abstract are the first two sections of the report, they are usually the last section that is written. This is because they are the summary or an overview of the whole report and it is easier to write after you have finished the whole report.

CHEM2201/6201 Laboratory Report Writing

Title: Title should be short, straightforward and informative. Typically, a title is made up of a short and complex noun group, which names or identifies a person, place or thing. It tells the reader the purpose of your experiment or what you found. This will normally be the same as the title given in the prac notes.

Abstract: The function of abstract is to summarize four essential aspects of the reports (Table 1): a) the purpose of the experiment; b) key findings; c) significance and d) major conclusions. The abstract often also includes a brief reference to theory or methodology. The information should clearly enable readers to decide whether they need to read your whole report.

Typically, the information in the abstract answers the following questions and is ordered in the following sequence:

a. What is the experiment about and why was it done? (introduction) b. How was the experiment done? (methods) c. What were the main results? (results) d. What were the main conclusions? (discussion and conclusion)

As you can see, the sequence of the questions follows the same order as the structure of the report as a whole.

Useful Further Reading: 1. Rhoden, C. and Starkey, R, “Studying Science at University: Everything you need to

know”, 1998, St Leonards, NSW: Allen &Unwin. 2. Drury, Helen, “How to write a Laboratory Report”, 1997, ISBN 0958628505 3. Deiner, L. J.; Newsome, D and Samaroo, D. Directed self-inquiry: A scaffold for

teaching laboratory report writing; J. Chem. Educ. 2012, 89, 1511-1514. 4. Royce, M, Skilful writing of an awful research paper, Anal. Chem. 2011, 83, 633 5. https://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Chemistry-Lab-Report 6. http://www.chem.ucla.edu/~gchemlab/labnotebook_web.htm 7. http://learningcentre.usyd.edu.au/wrise/

CHEM2201/6201 Laboratory Report Writing

Example for grading rubric of laboratory report

Performance Criteria

1 Beginning

2 Developing

3 Accomplished

4 Exemplary

Structure Does not contain all sections

required

Contains all sections (except possibly Reference section) but the content within each section

is not appropriate

Contains all sections, content generally correct with only

occasional lapses, minor edits are required

All sections present and clearly labeled and all information within

each section is appropriate

Style

Unclear expression and/or casual style and/or improper use of

scientific terms, pervasive grammatical errors, possibly

handwritten

Mostly clear expression but casual language. Lacks proper

use of scientific terms. Grammatical errors frequent.

Clear, mostly professional tone. Largely correct use of scientific terms. Minor issues in tone or

tense, some small grammar errors, possible tendency to

write too much or be redundant

Concise, clear, professional tone (impersonal or passive voice when required). Correct use of proper scientific terms. No grammatical

errors.

Abstract Inappropriate content, lack of

understanding of the experiment.

Generally appropriate content, but lack of specificity or

completeness and/or serious lack of scientific language

Complete description of what was done and found, but

contains too much information and/or not written in passive

voice and/or improper scientific language.

Concise description of the what was done and found; written in a passive voice or other impersonal

voice.

Introduction

Experimental goal not expressed or incorrectly expressed, little or no

description of theory and no connection between theory and experiment or serious confusion

about theory

Experimental goal clearly and correctly expressed with an attempt at describing the theory, but incomplete or

unclear description

Experimental goal clearly expressed, theory well

described but missing clear connection between theory and

actual experiment

Experimental goal clearly expressed, theory well described

and illustrated with proper equations, relationship between theory and experiment is made

clear

Experimental

No reference to previously published procedure, inadequate

information provided for someone to reproduce experiment

Reference provided to previously published

procedure, but inadequate information provided to allow

someone to reproduce experiment. Or, no reference

provided but adequate information.

Reference provided to previously published procedure,

but too much information is provided (i.e. one could

reproduce the experiment, but one would first have to read

and winnow)

Reference provided to previously published procedure, adequate information provided to allow

someone to reproduce experiment

Results

Graphs: functional relationships are not clear or are non-sensical. Axes

may be missing proper labels. Tables: Column headings are

incompletely labeled and table is not readily comprehensible. Figure

captions are missing

Graphs: functional relationships are clear but axes may be

missing proper labels. Tables: Column headings are

incompletely labeled, but the table is still readable. Figure

captions may be missing

Graphs: axes labeled (units included), functional

relationships are clear. Tables: Column headings are labeled (units included), table is easily readable. Figure captions may

be missing

Graphs: axes labeled (units included), functional relationships

are clear, figure captions are provided and clear. Tables: Column

headings are labeled (units included), table is easily readable, figure captions are provided and

clear

Discussion

No data interpretation is presented or data interpretation is thoroughly incorrect; no connection between

data and theory or literature is presented; error is not discussed

Data interpretation is attempted but with little depth and possibly with some errors

in understanding; no connection between data and

theory or literature is presented; error is discussed but plausible causes are not

presented

Data interpreted with some depth and with strong

understanding of chemical principles; data may be compared to theory or

literature but some information or meaningful comparisons are missing; error is discussed, but the list of plausible causes may

not be complete

Important data interpreted in some depth and with strong

understanding of chemical principles; data is discussed in the

context of known theories or compared to literature values;

when necessary, error is discussed and a reasonably complete and

plausible list of causes is presented

Conclusion

Statement of important result is unclear or shows little

understanding of what the important data was; Even when

appropriate and necessary, comments on experimental improvements or real world

connections are not included.

Statement of important result is clear but may be incomplete;

Even when appropriate and necessary, comments on

experimental improvements or real world connections are not

included.

Statement of important result is clear and complete but may

include too much information. Where appropriate, comments on experimental improvements

or real world connections are included.

Statement of important result is clear, complete, and concise.

Where appropriate, comments on experimental improvements or real

world connections are included.

References No citations, no references list

Some citations present, but some missing. Separate

references list is either missing or shows little or no awareness

of standard format for chemistry citations.

Citations always or almost always present when

appropriate. Separate references list is present, but

may have some deviations from standard chemistry format

Citations always when appropriate. Separate references list is present

and follows standard chemistry conventions