Contents

1 Formal Lab Report Hints

1.1 Introduction

These hints will help you get a high score on your formal.

1.2 General

The formal should be handwritten and integral with the rest of your lab notebook. You may use ink to write the report except for tables, figures, and diagrams which should be super neat and in pencil (so that you can fix any small errors). I’m forgiving of some scratch-outs in the rest of the report because I like writing in pen myself, but I always dock a point for the very first (and really only the very first) scratch-out I see in a figure, table or diagram.

Also:

• Follow the book guidelines (pp. 4-5) letter for letter. I’m a by the book kind of guy.
• This is a formal writing assignment. Language technicalities (spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization) are important. I will correct your grammar, punctuation, etc. and I will dock points if there was clearly no effort made to write well.
• Please write on both sides of the paper. Fill it all in, leave no blank space.

1.3 Questions

• Answer the lab questions in numeric order somewhere between the heading and the end of the report. Please don’t put them somewhere else in your notebook, or before the heading.
• Start each question answer with QNN: where NN is the number of the question.
• Next, write the complete text of the question.
• Finally, write your answer to the question.

You can avoid the requirement to quote the complete text of the question if you paraphrase the question as part of your answer.

1.4 Preparation

There must be a paragraph for the preparation that is not part of any question answer, and that indicates your thinking about the lab.

1.5 Procedure

Enough material to allow anyone else to reproduce your work.

1.6 Raw Data

Only raw data, really raw, the stuff you read right off of some instrument. No math allowed, and that includes the equations of best fit lines.

1.7 Analysis

All of that math you wanted to have in Raw Data goes right here. You can quote the raw data in here if you want to, but it must appear first in raw data. Any math that you do do requires a sample calculation: you show in painstaking detail how you derived one of your numbers (and you tell me which one, e.g. row 1 column 3 of Table 3).

1.8 Conclusion

Don’t write too much, a half-page is usually good and I won’t probably even read more than that. Use the list on Page 5 of the lab manual as a checklist and exhaustively and carefully hit each of those topics. Otherwise I celebrate your thinking while I read this, I really appreciate any glimpse into the learning you have done and you can show off your science chops by suggesting improvements or identifying flaws.

1.9 Common Mistakes

These are what I seem to write most often when I’m taking points off:

• -1: too messy, use pencil please (for graphs, tables, and figures)
• -1: incomplete question answer. Write the question and then the answer please.
• -1: no sample equations.
• -3: see pg. 5 (missing one of the many items required in the conclusion, such as two questions, if you were to repeat the experiment, etc., all described on page 5 of the lab manual under “must include”).
• -1: label and number every table and graph and figure. By this I mean you must at least write “Table 1” for example by Table 1, etc.
• -1: incorrect (next to any question answer that is wrong).
• -1: this analysis belongs in the raw data section or similarly -1: this raw data belongs in the analysis section.
• -1: readability: please don’t invent section names, and please put the sections in order. (see p. 4 in the lab manual for section names and order).
• -1: readability: missing table of contents
• -1: heading: missing (lab partners name, date and time of lab and/or &tc).