professional lab report template

professional lab report template

Professional Lab Report Writing: A Comprehensive Guide

1. Introduction to Lab Reports

Part 1: Introduction to Lab Reports

Coastal Watching is an environmental management system that allows researchers to learn more about coastal hazards. However, it is of no use if coastal observers do not note down what they learned from the shore. At the end of the research, researchers need to know where the information was found and how accurate it is. There are standard methods to write down research results that make this easy. A laboratory report is a document that presents the results of an experiment of a scientific principle. It poses a research question and interprets the results of the activity used to test this hypothesis. This is the easiest way to prove that the concept has indeed been discovered.

It is not just chemistry students who write lab reports. Psychologists, engineers, computer scientists, and a variety of other experts must report their research findings in a formal format. What is the rationale behind this? A laboratory report is not solely a summary of the activities that took place. It describes research findings in a scholarly environment, allowing others to evaluate the findings and hypothesis in question. It is also a way of assisting researchers in understanding what they have written and reproducing the research with the same outcomes. The laboratory requirements differ slightly based on the industry that you work in, though they may all need laboratory reports. The bulk of laboratory reports include customary sections such as the introduction, methods, findings, and summary. Leave the abstract alone until after you have done the study. Instead, start at the outset and then thoroughly explain your hypothesis, the aim of the research, and your rationale for this. This helps your reader to appreciate the study that was conducted.

2. Structure and Components of a Lab Report

Familiarizing oneself with the standard sections of a lab report will go a long way in constructing an effective and comprehensive applied sciences or experimental document. This section should be approached as an attempt to define two main constructs found within the lab report: structure and organization, which allows for a simpler transfer of knowledge, and the discovering and sharing of new data, respectively. The primary sections of a lab report include the following: title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and references. This particular section of a lab report should be approached through the twin goals of providing an overview of each of the bigger sections while also utilizing them as guide headings to structure the writing process.

Defining and dissection of a comprehensive and succinct lab report, to be referenced throughout the initial processes of the drafting stage of a lab report. Writing is a valuable tool within science to further the understanding and application of your findings. A science report is a specific type of applied sciences document written to share the findings of an experiment or investigation. It follows a standard format and using this standard can make the results included in the report more easily accessed and understood. Lab reports share the following general structure. The first item within the lab report is the title. The title should reflect the purpose, audience and content of the report. It is usually word specific and often shorter than an academic essay title. The link between the content of the science inquiry and the decision it helped illustrate is usually apparent in the report title.

3. Writing Style and Language in Lab Reports

The language and style used in scientific lab reports are as crucial as the content itself. Scientific writing should be clear and to the point, and a lab report is the ideal medium for this mode of communication. The report should contain sufficient detail to allow the reader to understand and duplicate the experiment, noting any discrepancies or changes in the methodology. The facts and figures all need to be accurate in case the work of another scientist or some additional scientific object is reliant on that work. Science writing should be precise yet clear, and any words used should have extremely definite meanings. The following guidelines have been drawn up in order to help students write lab reports in a scientific format.

In academic writing, the active voice is used to express the doer of the task. For example, “Our technician drilled the hole in the plate.” Scientific writing need not maintain the doer as the subject of the sentence. Often the passive voice is used to keep the focus on the action and not the doer of the action. For example, “The plate was punctured with a 3/8 inch drill bit.” Use the present tense to write about fictitious set-ups, “If a student wants to replicate this experiment, they mix,” and the past tense to describe what was observed and what data were gathered, “The students mixed.” Scientific writing is impersonal and is thus written in the third person. For example, avoid sentences like “I poured 10 ml of solution B into the flask.” The statement would be better if written as “10 ml of solution B was poured into the flask.” As scientific writing is focused on data, no personal pronouns should be used, including: I, you, our/my, your, me, us, we, my, etc. Always be specific. Instead of saying, “I heard a sound,” say “I heard the sound of glass breaking.” While you might think that readers can infer sound means spoken language, the problems with vague, over-general descriptions, from the level of sound to more intricate scientific occurrences, are that you then have to explain, define, verify, clarify, profile, analyze, or illustrate your meaning. Clear, direct, and specific writing is the most desirable way to convey your point.

4. Data Presentation and Analysis Techniques

You will need to figure out how to present your data in a manner that makes it easy for readers to understand exactly what you did. Typically, you will use a formal table format or some other visual presentation (graphs, figures, schematics). Remember that when you write your report, you will have to have the formalized, mathematical description in the methods section, but you then need to summarize your results with tables, figures, etc., so that someone reading your report will get the general picture of what was done as they first read the report. There are some widely accepted rules for tables/figures. For example, you should have at least two, but not much more than seven columns, and your table or figure should be interpretable to the reader without reference to the rest of the report.

Presentation of your data is not enough. You need to be able to analyze your data, deciding if the standard deviation is too large, if the data itself is too variable, if the slope of a line is significantly different from zero, if a constant in an equation should have been zero, etc. You will, no that slightly have to use the statistics learned in 18.05 or from previous classes/competitions/summer jobs. Another sort of analysis that may have to be undertaken is the testing of a hypothesis. For example, can you say that this value is significantly greater than this one? Is this rate limiting? Constraining rewrite test seems to be the most applicable for this group. Regardless of what is done, you should be looking at the simplest tests, and not running off and doing massive analyses. The simpler you keep it, the more impressive your results will be! Data presentation is very important. Scientists in charge of a research group at a pharmaceutical company have stated that 95% of scientists, even PhD’s, are bad data presenters. What good is data if no one can understand it? It is important to present one’s data in an easy to understand manner, be it through graphing, a table or a figure. It is the visualization of data, what we are striving for in science!

5. Conclusions and Recommendations

Conclusions are based on the findings presented in the lab report. It is important to avoid bringing in new information that is not already covered in the report. The conclusions could be five to ten sentences long and cover the following aspects: a brief summary of the results; interpretation and explanation of the results; and an evaluation of the significance of the results. Recommendations are based on the conclusions of the lab report. They take the next step and can take the form of recommendations for further research (on the same or a related topic) or for a practical application of the findings to a relevant real-world context.

In some disciplines, researchers are expected to provide practical applications for their research; in others, they are expected to use the results of their research to decide their next steps in the research process (e.g., how to change the study’s focus, design or methodology to obtain better results). It takes as the point of departure the findings. Drawing primarily on the conclusions discussed above, it describes the authors’ results and points out implications for future research or practical applications. It helps the reader to understand the major findings of the study more efficiently because the results are clearly separated from the interpretation of the facts. It is important to avoid bringing in new information that is not covered in the report.