PREPARING LABORATORY REPORTS

A laboratory report is a written record of an investigation. Such a report in an integral part of any laboratory experiment. Reports are divided into areas that contain specific type of information. The printed instructions you will be given for each experiment will help you determine what must be written in your lab notebook. Because your experiments will vary greatly the reports you write will also vary. The following descriptions will help you decide how to write your lab report.

Title: Always have a title for your report. You may use the one on the instructions or make up one of your own.

Date: Write the date the experiment began in the upper right hand corner below the title.

Purpose: The purpose is a brief statement of the goals to be achieved by conducting the experiment. The instructions usually give a purpose or objective.

On the instructions, the materials needed is usually next. You do NOT need to copy this into your notebook.

Procedure: The instructions present the procedure in a step-by-step description of the activities to be done in order to gather the information needed to achieve the purpose of the experiment.. In your lab reports, you must write the procedure. You may summarize or shorten it, but 50% of your grade for the lab is based on having completed this portion of the experiment before beginning the lab.

Observations and /or Data: This section is an account of what takes place during the course of an investigation. Your observations must be recorded at the time the observation is made. Your data in this section will determine the calculations and conclusions in the next sections. The accuracy of your data will be checked by the teacher.

Calculations: In may cases, the “raw” data collected during the course of an experiment must be “processed” before valid conclusions can be reached. Processing data can include making mathematical calculations. The results of these calculations then are used as a basis on which to draw conclusions.

Conclusions and Questions: This section is where you answer the question: “Was the purpose of this experiment achieved?” The instructions usually have 2-5 questions that must be answered correctly. In many labs, the data is graphed and conclusions are drawn from the graphs. These graphs are stapled into the lab report.