WritingaLabReport.ppt

Writing a Lab Report Why? To learn how to write a scientific publication Writing a factual report is an important skill in all walks of life Golden rule - Aim for Clarity Expect to have to write at least two drafts Use good English throughout, complete sentences, paragraphs etc. We can’t tell you exactly how to write a good lab report but we can give some general guidelines and some definite advice about what not to do. Look at Journals in the library/on the web Physical Review Letters, American Journal of Physics Mechanics First report at end of 4 week standard experiment Assignment of a report title – discussion with demonstrator Can get full marks for a report even if the experiment was incomplete or even a failure. You get approx. 1 week to complete report Report marked by demonstrator, second marked by HoE, returned to you by demonstrator, discussion. Late reports – See Handout for rules! Style Impersonal, avoid first person - I/we Best to use passive voice – “The function generator was connected to the oscilloscope using a coaxial cable” rather than “I connected the function generator to the …” For exceptions to this rule see handout How long should the report be? 4-6 sides of A4 including graphs and figures. Any extra material can go in an appendix. e.g. program listing, long calculations etc. Structure Title Abstract Introduction Theory Method Results, Discussion, Errors Conclusion Bibliography Appendices See handout for alternative structures Abstract To know how to write one you need to know what they are for! People browse abstracts to decide whether they are interested enough to warrant actually reading the paper/visiting the poster/attending the talk They are a brief synopsis of what has been done and what method was used. Any key results (and their associated errors) should be quoted and main conclusions should be stated. Example: We report an experimental determination of the wavelength of light emitted by a commercial diode laser used in a c