How to write a good scientific or laboratory report

(Student ID Number)Your Name (Hywel Owen)

School of Physics and AstronomyThe University of Manchester

A Scientific or Technical Report

February 2014

This work was (perhaps) performed in collaboration with (Student ID Number/Name).

Abstract

In this report template we give some notes on how to write a good lab report. We observe that a good report and a good paper have similar aims and content, and that the abstract should be short and to the point. We find that good reports are typically less than twenty pages long, and that a lot of text can be cut whilst still conveying information well. Clear, simple text is better than superfluous verbosity.

1. Introduction and Use of Software

This document serves several purposes. a) It uses the same template that defines the house style in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. Therefore you can edit it to produce your reports.b) It contains examples on the use of Microsoft Wor.c) It contains instructions, advice and guidance on writing lab reports.

You are encouraged to use this template for your reports you are advised to read it carefully. You can write your report by editing a copy of this document. It’s a good idea to keep an unchanged copy for reference, (make it read-only and, for example, call it “original”). Do not change the style, i.e. the fonts, spacing, layout etc. Of course you should make sure you delete all the original text of this document when you finish!

You will see in the section heading that you can change the heading titles according to what you want to say. You can also change this template, or even use other software such as LaTeX to prepare your reports. The most important goal in writing is that the report is readable; the headings should be clear to see by the reader and they should be and consistently formatted. For example, particularly important points can be highlighted in italics to make them stand out, but you shouldn’t overdo this. Underling is sometimes also used, but doesn’t usually look as good. Bold text is often used to denote named things, for example to denote programming languages such as Matlab or Python.

The reader wants to be able to glance through the report and easily find their way around; you can see that judicious use of paragraph breaks and white space between them help the reader to structure their reading. Through this report we will repeatedly point out how important it is to not make the reader fight for information. For example, there is no particular reason why you can’t repeat information, for example in both figure captions and in the main text; but- and this is important - don’t repeat yourself unnecessarily.

It is often said that a good report – or for that matter, a good presentation – has the following structure:

Say what you’re going to say Say it Say what you said

This advice is terrible. A better way to think of a report is to try to achieve the following:

Introduce the purpose of the work Describe the work in detail Explain the significance of the work

2. Some Comments on Style and Layout

Different organisations and their publications demand particular ways of doing things when writing reports or papers, and often demand a particular style (sometimes called a ‘look and feel’) for their reports; a template may be provided, and for example several templates are provided in our own School. On occasion these templates will either not look very good, or be a bit hard to work with. That’s just

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tough; sometimes you don’t get a choice how things look. But you can try to work within the rules.

On the other hand templates do offer something that is useful but often not explained properly, and that is the provision of Styles. If you look in the toolbar of this report while editing it, you will see buttons that allow you to format parts of the text so they become - for example - body text (the technical term for the main text, for example the text of this paragraph), or to format headings, figures, and so on. Use them. Use the Style buttons, they will make your life much, much easier.

3. How to Write Sentences Clearly

Scientific writing is much like any other form of writing in that you are trying to convey information correctly, clearly, and convincingly; these are the three ‘C’s, at least according to me. However, scientific articles differ from, say, a newspaper article in that statements should be made rigorously; that means you should be unambiguous (you should use accurate language), and that you should justify all statements and assertions. The result will be something approaching a scientific style.

Good scientific writing will not jump fully-formed from your typing hands without practice, in the same way that good public speaking is only a natural talent for the very few. But both can be practised, and the feedback you get on your reports and your speaking will help you get better. You should get used to having your text commented upon ruthlessly: this doesn’t change in later life. Developing as a speaker should go hand-in-hand with developing as a writer.

To achieve clarity, first and foremost you must avoid spelling mistakes; nobody likes to read poorrly-checked text; turn on your spell checker and pay attention to spilling mistakes, realising that not all spilling mistakes will be picked up by your word-processing software. By the way, nobody should really care about spelling differences such as color or colour and whether one is French and the other is American; the important thing is that you are consistent, and only use one spelling choice for a word in any report. However, if you make daft mistakes like calling it Avocado’s Number you deserve everything you get; your spell checker can be an enemy as well as a friend, so be careful.

Next, make sure that every sentence you write is actually a sentence; surprising how often people miss this point (hint: that last clause was incorrect, as the text in these parentheses). Or like this sentence, which isn’t a proper sentence. This point also applies for different parts of a discussion joined by colons and semicolons. There is a difference in how they are used, and you should note that they were over-used in the text you just read. Finally, commas are invaluable in helping break up a sentence, but make sure you don’t over-use them, particularly in long sentences, or you may find the reader loses their way through such a long sentence, or perhaps you lose your way, and then nobody really knows what the point of it was, particularly once the sentence approaches lengths of a hundred words or more. Another thing to pay close attention to is to make sure that when you use the word ‘this’, the reader can figure out what ‘this’ refers to; just because you know your train of thought, don’t assume the reader does. Sometimes a different pair of eyes from your own can help.

Punctuation and the other aspects of technical writing are described well in a number of books and other guides, and some good guides may be found on the Internet. A particularly prominent one is the Chicago Manual of Style, which contains much good advice. However, the manual is quite long, so a few good tips are repeated here.

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Hyphenation can initially be tricky but is actually quite easy. You can call it a ‘spell checker’, or a ‘spell-checking system’; to make the latter term properly correct the first two words are hyphenated, but in this case you can get away with it and just write ‘spell checking system’. Sometimes you can’t though because omitting the hyphen changes the meaning: the trick is to read out the words with differing emphasis to see how they might be ambiguous. Similarly, placement of commas can make a big difference. A panda that eats shoots and leaves is quite different from a panda that eats, shoots, and leaves. On that note, make sure you get your use of aprostophes correct. ‘Knowing your shit’ is really very different to ‘knowing you’re shit’. Remember that the plural of ‘apostrophe’ is ‘apostrophes’, not ‘apostrophe’s’, and that sometimes single quotation marks (‘) can be mistaken for apostrophes and it might be better to use double quotation marks (“).

Stating numbers is most properly done as follows: numbers less than a hundred are given in word form, for example there are seven colors in the rainbow, it’s a twenty-one gun salute, and there are a hundred ways to leave your lover; but there are 101 Dalmatians. Whilst this is the proper way to write numbers, usually no-one will care if you say for example that there are 49 varieties of Heinz baked beans rather than forty-nine varities. However, people do get more upset if you get your capitalisation wrong. If we buy someone a gold ring the word ‘gold’ is not capitalised, and neither is silver, nor aluminium, carbon or any other element. But when they are abbreviated they are capitalised, for example one should use ‘Au’, ‘Ag’, ‘Al’ and so on. Isotopes may be denoted in a variety of ways: 12C, C-12, or carbon-12. If you look closely at the previous two sentences you will see that one of them used an ‘Oxford comma’ and the other one did not; it doesn’t matter if you use an Oxford comma or not, as long as it doesn’t change the meaning of the terms. Returning to the point about referring to chemical elements: it doesn’t matter which of the notations you use as long as you do it consistently. It’s just distracting to talk about carbon-12 and its relationship to 13C, so talk instead about carbon-12 and carbon-13. It’s just like talking about seven brides for 7 brothers: it’s annoying.

3. How to Convey Concepts Clearly

Remember, the basic aim of the report is to communicate your results to a literate – that is to say, a scientifically literate – reader, and to convince that reader (who may often by skeptical) that she or her should believe your results. Of course this includes your claimed accuracy. Your result may be a numerical value (for instance the acceleration due to gravity) or it may be the confirmation that some physical phenomenon is observed (for instance the form of the diffraction pattern produced when light passes through a slit). Also remember that the key to good communication is to keep things simple; write short sentences and, where there is a choice, use simple words everyone understands rather than long ones that you hope might impress the reader (or marker). 1500 words of text in a report is usually enough to say what you want to.

4. Structure of a Lab Report and Headings

Whilst this depends a bit on the particular template and house style, nearly all scientific reports have the following elements:

Title/authorship; Abstract;

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Content; Acknowledgements (you will rarely have these at undergraduate stage); References.

(note how lists are correctly separated using semicolons, but usually no-one notices if you don’t use them)

Your reports will be like this, and the main body of the text (the ‘Content’ part above) should be sub-divided into sections with appropriate headings, and possibly also occasionally sub-sections and sub-headings. The type of content that is usually included may include the following:

Introduction; Theory (sometimes this is part of the introduction, or it can appear

elsewhere); Equipment (if appropriate); Measurements (or simulations); Results; Discussion.

But, it is very important to understand that this is not a prescription that you must always have exactly the headings given here: Rather, if you are writing a report there should be a discussion of the theory, a discussion of the equipment, some measurements, and so on. Usually – as in the case of the present report – the headings will differ. For example, an experiment on Thermal Diffusivity might have the following headings: Theory of Thermal Diffusivity, Temperature Measurements, Method of Construction, Comparison of Methods, The Method of Exact Fractions, and so on.

Another very important thing to note is that you don’t have to artificially divide up your content into the sections: you just have to make sure those parts are in the text somewhere, and in a logical order which usually reflects the ordering described above. It’s much more important that the text makes a clear logical argument from beginning to end. This takes practice, and you may find yourself writing a few reports before you get the hang of it. But to help you get better, here are a just a few tips:

Equipment and named terms should be introduced before using them: the reader does not have access to your lab script, for example; You can often leave the finer details of theory to a suitable reference, but should give the gist of how something works; All assertions should be justified, ideally by the results of your work; Your work is not carried out in isolation; how do your results compare with other peoples’?

5. What Goes on a Title Page?

The layout of the Title Page is fixed by the house style. It consists of the Title, Author(s), Institution, Function, Date, (partner, if appropriate) and the Abstract. The spacing and font sizes are specified by the first page of this template.

5.1. The Title

This should be short and informative. Capitalise the first letter of the first word. Avoid abbreviations and jargon.

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5.2. About Abstracts

Every report or paper must have an abstract (there are things called ‘Letters’ in the scientific world that do not have these, but these are rare and actually they incorporate an abstract of sorts as well). An abstract should be about 50 to 250 words long. It should clearly, concisely and precisely state what the report is about, the experimental technique used, the final results and the claimed accuracy. Give a single result for any measured quantity so that it can be quoted. Don’t give references in the abstract and avoid equations as far as is sensible. Avoid using symbols, so that you don’t waste space defining them. Don’t use tables or graphics.

The abstract has to stand alone. The idea is that someone can read it, and then decide whether or not to read the report itself. The next section is an example of a good abstract.

Above all, remember that physics is a numerical discipline, so if you have made a measurement (an example might be measuring the mass of the electron) you should be putting the numerical value in the abstract. It is surprising how often the actual results are not put in the abstract; they should be.

5.3. Example of a Good Abstract

The acceleration due to gravity (at Manchester) was determined using a Kater’s pendulum, which is a rigid pendulum with two parallel knife edges that define the axes of rotation and its length. The acceleration due to gravity was determined to be 9.814 ± 0.002 m s-2. The accuracy is limited by the measurement of the length of the pendulum.

6. Scientific Style

Scientific papers are written in a particular style. This is characterised by careful clarity, wording that is both concise and precise and by the complete absence of verbiage (otherwise known as waffle). Scientists are by nature cautious – they shouldn’t make unwarranted claims. A scientific paper has to stand on its content and scientific merit and the approach is the antithesis of the hype, spin and attention seeking that are typical of the media and advertising.

It is usually best to use short sentences as this aids clarity. Use the past tense to describe what you did and use the present tense to describe ongoing situations (such as theory). Avoid the future tense, unless you really mean it. Make use of both the passive voice (e.g. measurements were made …) and the active voice (we concluded …). Both are fine and you can use them as needed.

The emphasis in a report is on the scientific result and not the particular individuals, so avoid excessive use of “I” or “we”. The occasional “we” is acceptable. This document itself contains very few of either.

As we said above, every part of the text must be written in grammatically-correct English sentences and there should be no spelling mistakes. There now follow some particular points, which are based on observation of the strengths and weaknesses of student reports in the past few years.

Make sure there is no silly repetition. This contrasts with this template which deliberately contains many repetitions, but then it’s not a scientific paper.

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Do not give instructions. The last sentence is an instruction. Instructions might be appropriate in the lab script or in this document, but not in a report. You are not describing, you are explaining.

Avoid detailed arithmetical or algebraic calculations. Just give the measurements, the results and how to get to the results. Rely on the reader being a physicist who can check the working if needed.

Avoid jargon and abbreviations. However, don’t avoid the use of correct scientific language: proper scientific language uses precise terms to avoid ambiguity. For example, in the everyday world there is no difference between mass and weight, whereas in physics there is.

Make sure that the text is in sentences and that you haven’t lapsed into notes. It is not usual to ask questions, as it is attention-seeking. Read your report critically and also try and persuade someone else to read it.

Delete all words that are not actually needed. For instance, delete the word “very” in the phrase “a very strong magnetic field”.

Do not include subjective comments, for instance that the results could have been better or that you didn’t enjoy the experiment. These can be put in the section on Personal Comments at the end of your report and on the Blue Opinion Cards in the laboratories.

Do not include the Aims and Objectives of the experiment as listed on the lab script. These relate to teaching outcomes and are not relevant for the report.

Avoid repeating material from the lab script. Consider when words should begin with a capital letter. Sentences begin with

a capital. So do proper names such as “Compton scattering” and “Young’s modulus”. However, elements - for instance iron and argon - are not so honoured.

Avoid the concepts of “can”, “could”, “possible”. Be specific and say what you did.

Finally, remember that you are writing about a finished piece of work. Therefore, do not say things such as that you ran out of time. Either you made a measurement or you didn’t; talk about the measurements you made.

7. The Introduction

This section should introduce the reader to the report. A brief statement of why the topic is of interest might be useful. Any historical background should be kept very short as, while it may be interesting, it doesn’t contribute to the main aim of the report. You might end with a brief summary of what you are going to include in each of the following sections.

8. Organisation and Content

Remember that the reader is probably not familiar with the experiment. Your target reader should be another literate scientist (an undergraduate physicist should be one of those) whose knowledge of the experiment is what yours was when you started it. So introduce the reader to the experiment. You can’t talk about the mirror until you’ve told the reader that there is a mirror. Referring to a figure showing the apparatus is often useful.

A common problem is how to report an experiment that consisted of several parts. For instance you might have used a Michelson interferometer to measure the

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wavelength of a spectral line and then measured the splitting of a line and then studied the bandwidth of a filter. It is really tedious to be presented with the theory (for each part) then the apparatus (for each part) then the measurements (for each part) then the results (for each part) then the errors (for each part) then the summary (for each part). It is far better to consider all aspects (theory, apparatus, measurements, accuracy, results, etc) of part one, (the wavelength) then all aspects of part two (the splitting) then part three.

9. Some Technical Details

9.1. Headings

Notice the format and font of the headings and sub-headings in this document. In the jargon of Word for Windows; the style of the main text is Body Text and the style of the headings is Heading 1. Sub-headings are not in bold face. Notice the numbering scheme and the position of full stops.

9.2. Units

Of course all quantities must have their units stated, as in 9.81 m s-2. Notice that there is a space before the units and the units are in Roman (not italic) font.

9.3. Errors

It is important, indeed essential, to discuss the errors i.e. the accuracy or uncertainties of the measurements and results. Remember:

A measurement without an error is not a measurement

In most cases there is no need to have a section dedicated to errors. It is far better to present statements about accuracy as you go along. For instance, state the accuracy of the equipment when you describe it, give the accuracy of the measurements when you describe them and give the accuracy of results as they are presented. Points on graphs should be plotted with error bars.

You have a balance to strike. You can assume that the reader knows the basics of error propagation so there is no need to spell out the formulae and arithmetical calculations in detail, yet you need to convince a sceptical reader that you have done things properly. For instance it is adequate, and indeed good style, to say: “The current and voltage were measured to an accuracy of 1.5% and 2.5% respectively. Combining in quadrature, this gives the power, P=IV, to 2.9%”. Any competent physicist can check that 1.5 and 2.5 do indeed combine in quadrature to give 2.9. However, leaving out the equation in examples similar to the one above would not be appropriate, since the reader might not know that P=IV (!) is the correct equation. It is usually important to explain what is the dominant source of uncertainty in the final result.

A one-page summary and a full write up of PC1181, Data Analysis, is available on the School teaching website. Remember to give numerical values to a sensible number of significant figures. An abstract claiming that your result for the acceleration due to gravity is 9.8 ± 0.015643 will be laughed at; really, it will be.

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9.4. Characters and Symbols

Greek letters and other special characters can be inserted into a word document by using Character Map (they are in the font Symbol) or you can use Insert>Symbol. For convenience several commonly required symbols are listed here so that you can simply Copy and Paste them as needed. Superscripts and subscripts can be made by typing the character, highlighting it, selecting Format, Font, then check superscript or subscript; or, you can just press the appropriate buttons in the toolbar

Here are some characters etc that might be useful for copying; or you can just pick the nearest equivalent letter in English (Roman) and then convert it to Symbol font from the toolbar.Some Greek characters:

x

2x

mSome useful symbols:

±-Some useful expressions:

4.2 10-6 and (12.1 ± 1.5) 108 and Tnitrogen .Note that a minus sign “-” is not the same as a hyphen “-” .

9.5. Equations

All equations must be part of a grammatically correct English sentence. If an equation needs to be referred to then it can be numbered as shown. Otherwise leave it unnumbered. The following examples show how to neatly define symbols as you go along and avoid an ugly list. Simple expressions can be entered directly from the keyboard. Here are some examples:

The amplitude as a function of time is given by A = Ao sint, where is the

angular frequency.

The period, T, of a simple pendulum depends on its length, l, and is given byT = 2 (l/g), (1)

where g is the acceleration due to gravity.

The gravitational force, F, between two point objects, of mass M1 and M2 is given by

F = G (M1 M2 / R2), (2)where R is the distance between them.

Notice that symbols, A, t, T, l, g, F, G, M, R, are in Italic, but Greek letters and superscripts and subscripts are in Roman. So it’s a bit tedious to type properly. However, this is the usual convention and is the default in Equation Editor. Functions such as log and sin are typed in roman font.

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For more complicated expressions and equations you can use Equation Editor by doing Insert>Object>Microsoft Equation.

Here is equation (2), but now set using Equation Editor:

The gravitational force, F , between two point objects, of mass M 1 and M 2 is given by

F=GM 1 M 2

R2 (3)where R is the distance between them.

Equation Editor includes all sorts of useful goodies, including integral signs (

∫−a

ax2dx= 2

3 a3) and exponentials (e

−E/kT).

As you can see, Equation Editor is quite powerful, but it takes some getting used to. A good way to learn is to experiment with the options. Also, make use of colleagues and let them learn from you.

The default in Word is that a new line following an object (e.g. an equation) is the beginning of a sentence and is automatically given a capital letter; this is often wrong straight after an equation. To get the letter “w” in lower case in the word “where” following equation (3), this auto feature has been turned off. (Go to Tools>AutoCorrect>Capitalize first letter of sentences.)

It is important that all symbols are defined, but do this only once.

If you’re really stuck, leave a space and write the symbol or whatever in by hand with fine black ballpoint. In this case make a photocopy of the page.

9.6. About Footnotes

The best advice to give about footnotes is to avoid them as much as possible1. Put useful information in the text. Put references in the list of references at the end.

9.7. About Appendices

The best advice about appendices is in general to avoid them. Lab reports are too short to justify an appendix at the end. If some calculation or derivation or detail really is needed and does not fit comfortably into the main text then a short appendix might be appropriate. The exception to this rule is when giving programming code; in this case an appendix is the right place, as putting large reams of text into the main body of a report is annoying.

1 You can see here how annoying it is to look for a footnote that is attached to the main text.

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10. Presenting Information in Tables, Diagrams, Spectra and Graphs

Graphical information - which includes tables, diagrams and graphs and so on - can be generated in several ways. You can a) use Word itself, b) use another package and paste it in, c) scan it in from another document and paste it in, d) draw it neatly by hand yourself and scan and paste. If you do copy a graphic from another document, it is important that you should say in the figure caption where it has come from, i.e. give a reference, otherwise you could be accused of plagiarism. It is also permissible to take a graphic, cut around it and glue it onto your printed output. In this case make a photocopy of the page. Note that it is conventional to label all diagrams, graphs and spectra as “figures” and they should be numbered sequentially. Tables should be numbered separately.

If possible put the graphics in suitable places in the main body of the text, near to where they are referredto. If this is not possible put one or more at the end. It is essential that all these graphics are numbered (as in this document) and that all of them are referred to from the text.

Each graphic should also have a caption (see the illustrations). Captions are not merely a title. They can be quite long and this is quite useful to help explain the details. You can lock the caption to the graphic (to prevent splitting over a page) by selecting the graphic, then Insert>Caption, enter your caption, OK. To make a caption; select the table itself, Insert>Caption, type in the text. This method (usually) prevents the caption from becoming separated from the graphic at a page break. You can click on the text in the caption and edit it as needed. The tables are labelled: Table 1, Table 2 etc. The diagrams, graphs, spectra etc are labelled: Fig 1, Fig 2, etc as in this document. The caption is in a smaller font that the main text. It is Times New Roman 10 point (instead of 12 point). Notice that there is a bit of white space above the graphic and below the caption; this is to help the reader separate the figure from the text when reading.

A couple of final points. Firstly, a figure or table is not part of the main text; it sits on the same page but is not part of the flow of the sentences. Secondly, every figure or table should be referenced from the main text somewhere; this is done by referring to it using its number. Table and figures are numbered separately, as they are in this report.

10.1. Tables

Tables are a very useful way of presenting data, but avoid giving tables containing lots of raw measurements. If a graph shows the data clearly there is no need to present them also as a table. If you find yourself making a very big table of reults, it’s time to present them in a graph. A table is often a good way of summarising the results from several different measurements, so make good use of them. To make a table select Table>Insert>Table…, and then specify the number of rows and columns that you want. Table 1 is a simple example of some artificially generated data. Notice that the table is numbered, referred to and that there is a caption.

CurrentAmps

Magnetic FieldTesla

B2

Tesla2Height of meniscusmm

0.1 0.23 0.053 3.24

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0.2 0.46 0.212 3.410.3 0.66 0.436 3.600.4 0.87 0.757 3.970.5 1.06 1.124 4.320.6 1.27 1.613 4.81

Table 1. Height of the meniscus for different magnetic fields. The heights, measured with a microscope, are accurate to 0.02 mm. The calibration of the magnetic field in terms of the current is taken from reference [1]. Notice that you can put quite a lot in a caption, so they are quite useful. Also notice the way in which the reference is used (see Section 14)

10.2. Diagrams

You can generate drawings by (a) using a package such as Draw or Paint and pasting it in, (b) scanning a drawing and pasting it in or (c) draw the graphic using the facilities within Microsoft Word.

Every figure must be numbered and it must be referred to from the text. Also every figure must have a caption as illustrated in fig 1. Note that the caption can be more than a title and in fact can be quite long.

Fig 1 was generated using the drawing package in Word (Insert, Picture, New Drawing), but Powerpoint is probably better You just have to play with the line types and arrows etc. Notice there is some white space above and below the figure. The figure is numbered and referred to from the text. There is a caption.

Fig 1. Schematic diagram of the Michelson interferometer. Mirror A is movable using a micrometer screw gauge and a reduction mechanism. Mirror B has fine adjustments for alignment. You can give quite a lot of information in the caption, where it is easier to relate to the figure than if that information is in the main text. Notice also that captions go under the figure, not above it.

11. Graphs

Graphs are worth a thousand words for presenting data to a reader. We are much better at digesting visual data than a table of numbers or a lot of detail explained in the text. So it is rare for reports of experimental work to not include some graphs. Graphs can be prepared by hand (not to be undervalued) or prepared by one of many computer packages such as EasyPlot [2], Matlab [3], or Excel [4]. Remember to label

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the axes and to add a caption. Remove unnecessary material such as plots of residuals, the fitted parameters, computer instructions etc. Display only the essentials and don’t distract the reader with side issues. Remember that plotting error bars is an essential.

11.1. Inserting Graphs into your report

Fig 2 is an example of a graph generated using EasyPlot. You can save plots in a variety of formats, but .jpg (or jpeg) is not a good choice as it makes lines look blurry; jpg is fine for photographs. png or gif are much better choices, and eps is good if you use LaTeX. Once inserted into your report, figures can be adjusted by use the options available by right-clicking on the figure.

3.0

3.5

4.0

4.5

5.0

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0

B

A

Increase of height with magnetic field. The slope gives the susceptibility.

Magnetic field squared, Tesla 2

Hei

ght o

f men

iscu

s, m

ms

Fig 2. Increase of height with magnetic field squared. The data are consistent with a linear relationship and the slope is related to the susceptibility. The round points, B, are for a saturated solution and the square points, A, are for a diluted solution as explained in the text. This is an example of a graphic generated using EasyPlot but Matlab is much better. The data points are fictitious, but at least you can see them clearly. Similarly, the axes are readable; it should be obvious that this is important.

12. The Discussion and Summary

It is good practice to end your report with a Discussion and/or a Summary. This is preferred to a Conclusion. In the Discussion you can elaborate on any technical points such as whether your measurements do or do not agree with each other or, in some cases, agree with reference-book values. The discussion is where you discuss the significance of your work, and that usually means interpreting it in comparison with the work of others.

Don’t end your report with excuses such as the results would be better if only more time were available. That’s nearly always true. The emphasis in a report is to draw valid conclusions from the data actually available.

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13. General Appearance

Microsoft Word doesn’t always make a very good job of positioning graphics; you can right-click on them to make sure they are so-called ‘inline’ figures, which makes positioning them much easier. Inline figures don’t have little anchors, and they don’t bounce around the document by themselves as you add or remove text. You can print out your report either single sided or back to back. You can staple the pages of your report together or you can put it in a plastic folder (available from the laboratory technician). A useful tip is that if you can’t put a staple through your report, it is too long.

14. About References

References serve several purposes: they acknowledge sources of information, they lend authority to statements in the report and they tell the reader where s/he may find more information. Using other people’s material without referencing it is plagiarism. By judicious use of references to derivations of equations or detailed descriptions of bits of apparatus you can even save yourself work! All reports should have some references. References consist of two related parts, one in the text and the other at the end of the report. In the text, for example, you may refer to a book as in [6] or [7]. You can also refer to a specific page in a book using [6;p23] and later [6;p45]. It is allowed to refer to the lab script [1], but only for the value of parameters built into the equipment or for information that it is impossible to find elsewhere. If you received a relevant piece of information from a person, you can reference and acknowledge them as in: “A good technique [8] for measuring……”. Complementary to what appears in the main text is the list of references that appears at the end of the report under the heading “References”. Each entry in this list should be sufficient for the reader to identify the source of information and usually should have a name, a date, the title of the book or journal and a publisher. As an example of how to refer to a scientific paper look at the one by Lyne and Lorimer [9]. Within this template references are indicated by a number in square brackets and appear in full in the reference list at the end of the document. There are other slightly different ways of using references but use this one. The heading “References” does not have a number.

References to the web are contentious because, while books and journals exist in perpetuity in libraries and can always be obtained, material on the web can be here today and gone tomorrow. Also papers in journals are refereed and articles in books are approved by the publishers, whereas there is often no such stamp of authority for material on the web. However, web material can be very topical. Therefore, references in scientific papers (that should stand the test of time) are rarely to the web.

Some more tips: The lab script is not a suitable reference Wikipedia is not a suitable reference Textbooks are usually suitable references right now Later on you will find yourself citing published papers more and more

Incidentally, the term Bibliography is used for a list of books and papers which are of general interest and which are not referenced individually. This might be appropriate in a more general article, such as a vacation essay, but it’s not used in scientific papers, nor in lab reports.

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15. A Final Checklist

Here is a short checklist that’s worth going through when you’re writing a report.

Delete all the original text of this document if you’ve used it. Does it convince the reader? Does it conform with the guidelines? Check numbering of sections, figures and references. No silly repetition. No unnecessary words. No ambiguities. Run a Spell Checker, but look at the results. Read it. Get a friend to read it. Read someone else’s.

16. Assessment and Feedback

16.1. Length of the Lab Report

Students often put a lot of effort into their lab reports and they are often much too long. There should be at most about 1500 words of text. Anything over 2000 words is excessive for an experiment that took only a few days. The whole report, including the Title Page, the text and figures and diagrams etc, (but excluding a page of Personal Comments) should not exceed 8 pages. This template is well over 5000 words so your report should be less than half this. However, this template has only one table and only 3 figures, your report could well have more. Undergraduates often say they struggle to fit everything into this word limit; this is nearly always due to excessive language. With practice you will be able to compress twice the information into half the words; so practice doing that.

Note it is not necessary to include everything that you did. It is more important to present some result(s) in an honest and convincing way.

16.2. Assessment

The assessment of your report will concentrate on how well it stands up as a scientific document, particularly how well it communicates the results of your experiment to a reader. In normal lab marker will try to ignore how well you actually did the experiment because this was previously assessed in the interview.

You might like to bear in mind that by far the most common comment made by markers is that students seem to have not read the guidance and instructions. So read this advice carefully and take note.

16.3. Late Reports

Working to a deadline is an important skill, i.e. one that will matter in any decent job you do. Any report handed in after the deadline will be marked as usual (though not as a matter of urgency), but there will be a penalty. Note that a report (of adequate standard) is required, even if late, in order to satisfy work and attendance requirements. In real life it is nearly always better to have an adequate report on time than a great report that’s too late.

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Acknowledgments

Any acknowledgments should be at the end of the report before the references. You might like to thank your partner, lab technician, tutor etc. By convention there is no need to number this section. For example, I would like to thank all those students whose reports I have read in recent years and thus obtained some knowledge, albeit limited, of the difficulties of writing laboratory reports.

References

[1] Hook, J. 2002. Low Temperature Resistance, 2nd yr lab script, Physics Dept, Manchester Univ.

[2] EasyPlot, Scientific Plotting and Data Analysis, by Stuart Karon, Spiral Software, Box 2537, Chinle, AZ 86503.

[3] MATLAB, Version 5, The Math Works Inc, Natick, Mass 01760.[4] Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Corporation.[5] Matlab Least Squares Fit, James, R, Dept Physics, Manchester University.[6] Squires, G. L. 2001. Practical Physics, 4th Ed, Cambridge University Press.[7] Kaye, G. W. C. and Laby, T. H. 1995. Tables of Physical and Chemical

Constants, 16th ed., Longman. [8] Cunane, P. Private communication.[9] Lyne, A. & Lorimer, D. 1994. Nature, 369, 127

Length and Date

The following is not really part of a scientific paper, but can usefully be included in a lab report for teaching purposes.

The number of words in this document is 0 .

This document was printed on 5/14/23 at 23:00:04.

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Personal Comments

Comments such as “I enjoyed the experiment”, “I think this is a good experiment because…”, and any such personal opinions are not part of a scientific report and must not be included in your report.

However, you may, if you wish, place at the back of your report a separate page entitled “Personal Comments”. This will not be treated as part of the scientific paper, but as information for markers. Relevant information might be that you have been working without a partner. You can also ask the marker for feedback on specific points such as “I was unsure about section 3; is it too long?”, “I didn’t know whether or not to include xxx”, etc or make any comment you like. We hope that this will provide better feedback for you.

Of course comments can be made at any time anonymously by filling in the Blue Comment Cards available in the laboratories.

Comments on this Template

This template may contain bugs and weakness as well as good advice. Please send comments and corrections to:

Dr. Hywel Owenemail: hywel.owen@manchester.ac.uk