Students are mandated to come up with lab reports because they are critical and essential part of all laboratory courses and usually matters when it comes to your grade score. It will be of great value if you use the outline given by your instructor while writing your lab report. Some instructors necessitate a lab report to be included in a lab notebook, while others will demand a separate report. Apply the following format while citing your lab report, it will act as a guide if you aren’t sure how to get your report done. It incorporates all the parts a lab report demands from students.
Lab Report
A lab report is an explanation of what you did in your experiment, what you learned and the results yielded by your study and experiment.
Lab Report Essentials
Title Page
Have it at your fingertips that not all lab reports contain title pages, but if your instructor requires one from you, it will be stated on a single page:
- The title of the experiment.
- Your name and the names of any lab partners.
- Your instructor’s name.
- The date the lab was carried out or the date the report was handed over
Title
The title denotes what you did. A perfect tittle is always precise and should be brief (at least let it have ten words or less) and state the key point of the experiment or examination. An example of a title would be: “The consequences of Ultraviolet Light on Borax Crystal Growth Rate”. It will add value if you begin your title using a keyword rather than an article like “The” or “A”
Introduction or Purpose
Normally, the introduction is contained in one paragraph that denotes the aim or basis of the lab report. Outline the presumption in one sentence. In some instances an introduction may incorporate background information, in a nutshell summarize how the experiment was undertaken, state the outcomes of the experiment, and outline the conclusions of the experiment. Even if you don’t write a whole introduction, you ought to cite the aim of the experiment, the reason performed the experiment. This is the part where you draw your thesis.
Materials
Draw down everything required to complete your experiment.
Methods
Define the procedures you attained during your study. This is your procedure. Explain yourself accordingly in that anyone could read this section and duplicate your experiment. Authorize this section and let it act as an instruction to any person who may carry out the same experiment. It will add some value if at all you will present a figure to diagram your experimental procedures.
Data
Numerical data derived from your procedure should be presented in a table. Data encompasses what you recorded while conducting the experiment. State them as really as they are. It’s just the facts
Results
Evaluate in words what the data means. Sometimes the Results part is merged with the Discussion. These is a very technical section and you might be forced to request for help from someone to write a lab report in accordance with the outcome of your methodology.
Discussion or Analysis
The Data section incorporates numerals; the Analysis section contains any calculations you carried out based on those numbers. This is where you evaluate the data and decide whether or not a hypothesis was accepted. This is also where you would discuss any wrongs you may have done while conducting the examination. You may blend it by describing the ways of improving the study.
Conclusions
In many occasions the conclusion is a single paragraph that in compensate what conspired in the experiment, whether your hypothesis was accepted or turned down and its implication.
Figures and Graphs
Graphs and figures ought to be labeled with a descriptive title. Label the axes on a graph, being sure to incorporate the units of the measurements. The independent variable is on the X-axis, the dependent variable (the one you are measuring) is on the Y-axis. Be sure to date back to figures and graphs in the text of your report: the first figure is Figure 1, the second figure is Figure 2, in that procedure
References
You will be required to state the references if your research was based on someone else’s work or if you cited facts that require documentation some instructor’s demands reference so better state it.