Objective: Summarize the lab in 1-2 sentences. You don’t need to give many details.

Introduction: Give some background information about the lab. Describe the

    equipment, or a historical connection, or if you’re examining an object (let’s say a

    globular cluster) you could research that. This is one place where you can easily

    get some BONUS marks! Imagine you’re giving this lab to someone who knows

    nothing about the subject matter: this person should be able to follow the rest of

    the lab with just your introduction. Be careful about plagiarism!!! Copying

    something word-for-word, even with a citation, is not accepted. I don’t want to

    know what wikipedia thought. Also, no 10-page essays!!! A single page will do.

    Keep in mind, you’re not discussing the lab here. Just background information.

Equipment: What did you use in the lab?

Procedure: Here’s where you go over what you did in the lab. I stress the “did in the

    lab” part because you don’t need to put anything beyond the experiment.

    Calculations, graphs, tables have their own section and come afterwards. In terms

    of language, I don’t expect you to do the third person past tense. As long as you

    are consistent, that’s fine.

Observations/Tables: This will vary with each lab, but include all information from

    the lab. You can use tables if that helps organize things (keep in mind, if I can’t

    find the information, it makes marking your lab difficult). If you have multiple

    tables, please give them numbers so they’re easier to keep track of. Tables should

    have clearly defined rows and columns. They should also include a header (ie.,

    what do the rows and columns mean?) with units!!!! And use Scientific Notation as

    much as possible. If you need help with this, please ask.

Graphs: Make these big! Trust me. It helps. Also, make them by hand. You are

    welcome to tape, staple, glue some graph paper in, but no computers. Be sure to

    label each axis with what is being plotted (ie., distance) as well as the units (ie.,

    distance in km). If you feel up to a challenge, include error bars.

Calculations: You will need to make repeated calculations in most labs. Please

    provide a sample of each kind of calculations (if you repeat the same step 20

    times, you just need to show me one version all the way through). Be clear on

    what symbols mean. It’s a good idea to write a short sentence describing each

    calculation. And include units!!!! Can’t stress that enough.

Results: Just a few sentences here. When it’s all said and done, what did you find

    out? What did you discover from this? It will generally be a numerical value, so

    give that number. What does it mean? Are you close to some accepted value? And

    don’t forget the units! What sources of uncertainty do you have? Are they large?    

    Are you within errors of the accepted value? If not, why might that be? To test

    your result from the accept value, you just take the percent difference, which

    basically measures how far off you are from the accepted value.

         

                                                                       

Conclusions: Congratulations! You’ve reached the end. Here in a paragraph or two,

    summarize everything you did in the lab. What was the experiment? What were

    the results? What did you learn? Remember that the purpose of science is to ask

    questions. Is your answer reasonable? If not, why not?

References: All I want is enough details to find the source of information you used.

    You don’t need to be formal about this and you don’t need to include the lab

    manual as a reference.