Format and Guidelines for Success Formal Lab Reports Format and Guidelines for Success

PUT ON YOUR SCIENTIST HAT If you are a true scientist, then you have probably spent many years becoming the expert on your topic and your research. You have likely spend months if not years designing and refining your research and you have finally completed your work. You want to share your results with the scientific community. The challenge it, you are the expert and you need to ensure that others can understand your work, hence the INTRODUCTION – your way of sharing your knowledge with your readers and giving them the background they need in order to follow and understand your work. “Think about what you would need to explain to a friend, parent, sibling… in order for them to understand this lab”.

Introduction Introduction: One or two paragraphs stating the background information required for the lab and definitions. Do not talk about the lab itself!!! *** You must cite your references throughout your lab, but especially here. ***Works cites list at the end of the lab

Citations and works cited list This is a reference in the text of your lab. At the end of a quote, paraphrased sentence (before the period) or paragraph (after the period) These are the full bibliographic citations found as a list at the end of your paper and formatted for you in noddle tools

REJECT OR ACCEPT Setting up a clear PURPOSE and HYPOTHESIS is very important. If your lab has been well designed and formatted properly, all of your hard work will lead to you either accepting or rejecting your hypothesis in your conclusion. *** many of the most interesting findings in science have come from results that reject the hypothesis. *** make sure that your lab “flows” ie. Your purpose and hypothesis match and make sense to your procedure and conclusion. It should all connect

Your purpose & Hypothesis Purpose: Something that one sets out for oneself as an objective, the aim of the experiment; may be stated as a question, but must be a complete sentence and must cover the entire objective. Generally this is only one sentence long. This must be in your own words. Hypothesis: Educated answer to the purpose. This should also be one sentence long. Make sure that the purpose and hypothesis match each other. Reason: This is going to be longer. You must explain your hypothesis using science. Make sure it’s an explanation not just a statement and that you separate it from your hypothesis. Cite a source

DEFINING YOUR VARIABLES Remember, you are a scientist and you are trying to convince others that your research has produced reliable evidence upon which you are basing your conclusion. Also remember, that other scientist are going to review your work, and look for potential flaws in your design or procedure, assumptions your missed, or Variables you did not control. It is critical that you identify your variables and there needs to be a lot of consideration in your planning of your procedure how they will be varied or controlled, measured or monitored etc.

Not all labs have them all Variables Independent Variable: What you are changing Dependant Variable: What you’re measuring Controlled Variables: List of all the variables you are not changing so that they do not affect your results Experimental Control: not for all labs –Experimental Control is different than controlled variables, it is the condition you set up to compare your other results to ie. Plant with no fertilizer. Not all labs have them all   VARIABLE HOW IT WILL BE VARRIED, MEASURED, OR CONTROLLED INDEPENDANT DEPENDANT CONTROLLED EXPERIMENTAL CONTROL

HOW CLEAR IS CLEAR? “Take out a piece of paper and fold it once”. It might seem simple, but this instruction leaves one open to many interpretations. You do not want Ambiguity in your lab procedure. Think of your procedure like the recipe for other scientist to follow. Remember, science is collaborative and other scientists are going to recreate, modify, and elaborate on your work before it stands a chance of being accepted. Mean what you say and say what you mean. Be Clear

Procedure 1) some experiments will just require you to reference the textbook – name, page number and procedure numbers. Make sure that you note any changes made, if this is the case. 2) other experiments will require you to design the procedure yourself by listing the steps to follow in conducting the experiment. Make sure you take into consideration things such as sample size, variables and controls etc. As well as measurements and analysis of results. Don’t forget to give instructions for what and how to collect data, what to do with that data (calc, graph etc, and how to analyse that data) *** If you are “designing” the lab you will have to write out the materials & procedure in full BUT if you are following the procedure in a handout, you can simply reference it, and note and changes made!

SHARING YOUR RESULTS Remember, you want to make it clear for other scientists, and peers to “see” your data. They need to be able to see the “raw” data that you collected, but it needs to have all the details present to make sense like units etc. But DON’T Graph this. Boring! And it tells us nothing. So, WHAT TO GRAPH ? – its actually simple, graph the data/result that helps illustrate your conclusion. Trends – line graphs or regressions Comparing averages – bar graphs Correlation – two graphs on the same axis There are many possibilities, too many to cover.

Data analysis Data: table of observed, and recorded data. Each table should be have a descriptive title so the reader knows what it is showing them and you MUST have units. You should include both quantitative (#) and qualitative data (observations). Results: graph or diagram representing the labs results and or a table showing the calculated results – not all labs have all of these but think about the purpose and conclusion. What are you trying to show…I will show you how to do this on excel and google sheets. LABELS LABELS LABELS, UNITS UNITS UNITS

Evaluation Limitations of Experimental Design – how well your/the experimental design helped answer your experimental question. What worked well (and why) what did not work well (and why). outlier points could be discussed (if there were any outlier points) as well as possible reasons for those outlier points. Random errors (population is variable) and systematic errors (problems with your actual measurements) must both be explicitly addressed. Variables that may have impacted your results that you could not or did not control  ***This is NOT a place to suggest a new experiment. Restrict your discussion to the experiment you did. Suggestions for Improvement - in reference to the limitations given in the previous subsection, what realistic and useful improvements could be made if you were to do this investigation again? Suggesting a different way of measuring or controlling the variables is encouraged, as long as it is a real improvement. Written reports are not an appropriate place to vent. More trials only reduces random error. If you do not have any fluctuation between trials this isn’t really an improvement. More time gets you no points. A “better” stopwatch, ruler, etc. is too vague, and probably unrealistic. Use of calipers instead of a ruler, use of a photogate instead of a stopwatch are real improvements. This is not a place to suggest a new experiment with a different independent and dependent variable. Restrict your improvements to the experiment you performed!!

NOW TO CONCLUDE So after spending month, years, a lifetime on an investigation, do you think you would say. “The lab went well. We learned a lot.”? I hope not. The conclusion is what it has all been leading to. A few important things to remember: No new information here – everything should be in your lab already Refer to your data and graphs as evidence Make sure you accept or reject BUT watch out for the word PROOVE personally I would not use it.

Conclusion All conclusions have 3 parts & 3 paragraphs  Restate the purpose and hypothesis and then state if the data accepts or rejects the hypothesis Support the above by referring to your data table and results. Also explain the results, and give a reference that supports those results and explanation. Make a general scientific concluding statement ie. The theory the lab supported or demonstrated. AND state a potential future investigation purpose related to this investigation.

Good Conclusion Example The purpose of this investigation was to compare the impact of fertilizer A and B on plant growth. The hypothesis was that fertilizer B would promote more growth in the plants because it contained more nitrogen. The data rejected the hypothesis. In the Graphs above, you can see that the average plant growth with fertilizer A is not significantly different compared to the plant growth in fertilizer B however both grew significantly better than the plants with no fertilizer. Research done by Smith also agrees with these results. In conclusion, Fertilizer A and B both had the same impact on plant growth. This supports the scientific Theory that plant growth is related to nutrient availability. A potential for future investigation would be to compare the impact of there fertilizers on different plant families.