Guidelines and Suggestions for Writing Lab Reports What’s the purpose of a lab report? Scientists communicate the results of their experiments primarily through articles in scientific journals. Lab reports follow the basic format of these articles. They give you practice in scientific writing. They also give you a chance to reflect on what you did in lab and cement your knowledge of what you learned. General tips for lab reports 1. Follow the checklist and rubric for the report. You’d be surprised how many people don’t. 2. Use headings for the different sections to stay organized. 3. Do not wait until the last minute to start your lab report

Guidelines and Suggestions for Writing Lab Reports What’s the purpose of a lab report? Scientists communicate the results of their experiments primarily through articles in scientific journals. Lab reports follow the basic format of these articles. They give you practice in scientific writing. They also give you a chance to reflect on what you did in lab and cement your knowledge of what you learned. General tips for lab reports 1. Follow the checklist and rubric for the report. You’d be surprised how many people don’t. 2. Use headings for the different sections to stay organized. 3. Do not wait until the last minute to start your lab report. 4. Be thorough, but concise. Say it simply and avoid unnecessary words. 5. Don’t plagiarize! 6. If you need help, ask. Stop by during my office hours or send me an email. 7. Check spelling, grammar, and content before submitting! 8. If you submit a lab report electronically, make sure you’ve actually attached the attachment before sending the email. If you don’t get a grade back within a few days, email me to make sure I got it. Introduction Include general background information about your topic, specific information related to the experiment, the purpose of the experiment (you can usually think of this as: what question were you trying to answer?), and your hypothesis or hypotheses (remember, an EDUCATED guess, not just a guess. For most experiments, you already know enough about the topic beforehand to make a realistic prediction based on facts). Make sure you put in the time and do the research to produce a thorough introduction. Properly cite any sources you use and make sure all text is in your own words. Plagiarism, intentional or not, is most often seen in the introduction. The introduction is an extremely important section. This is the information you will revisit in your conclusions section. Materials and methods This is not the most exciting section, but it is a necessary one. Imagine that your lab report has been published as a journal article. Other scientists won’t be able to reproduce your results or evaluate whether you had a good experimental design unless this section is complete and well-written. A common mistake: make sure you USE THE PAST TENSE. “We measured gerbils…” or “Gerbils were measured…” NOT the present tense “Measure gerbils…” Another common mistake: including unnecessary information. For instance, you don’t need to state “we recorded the data”; it is assumed that you recorded the data since it appears in the results section below. Yet another common mistake: not including necessary information. For instance, if you filled a test tube to a 1 cm mark, and all you write is “we filled the test tube to the mark” but don’t state how many cm up the tube the mark was. Final check before you move on: Could someone else do the experiment you did by reading your description of the methods you used? A warning: Take notes during the experiment, since our methods may differ from those in the lab manual. Don’t come back last minute after you’ve forgotten what we did and poorly paraphrase the lab manual methods. For these lab reports, you will be asked to identify controls and experimental variables in this section. Controls are things that could change but that you keep constant. Experimental variables are what you are adding or changing in an experiment, what you think will cause a response. For instance, if you want to know whether slugs are attracted to beer, beer would be the experimental variable. A group of slugs to whom you offer beer would be the experimental group. You might also offer slugs water; this would be the control group. Results Your data goes here, both in the form of a data table and a written summary of the data. A common mistake: writing about the results in the methods section. Methods just describe what you did to get the results. Another common mistake: writing about conclusions in the results section. Results are just that – the data you got after you did the experiment. Focus on WHAT the experiment showed, not WHY it showed this. Yet another common mistake: instead of a detailed written summary, including just a brief sentence that doesn’t contain any useful information about the results. Discussion/Conclusions In this section, really think about your data and write about what your results mean. Were your hypotheses supported? If so, why? If not, why not? Refer back to your introduction – having done research for the introduction so that you really understand the topic will help here. Doing additional research may be necessary. If there were multiple hypotheses, make sure you thoroughly address each one. In our lab reports, this section is also used to talk about sources of error. Were there things that might have led to inaccurate results? Were there variables which could have been controlled, but weren’t? A really well-written lab report (or journal article) won’t end with a discussion of sources of error, “a whimper about need for further sampling or work, or apologetic details about anomalies in the data” as Valiela (2001) puts it. Instead, end with a brief summary of your results/conclusions. Experiments involve trying to answer a question – what was the answer to your question? A common mistake: Reporting that your hypothesis was “proven” or “right”. Scientists are cautious. Instead, if the data agree with your hypothesis, your hypothesis is “supported”. Works Cited Any sources of information you used in the report must be cited here in the proper format. You have a choice of APA or MLA format. Different sources (internet, book, etc) have different formatting rules. This website: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/ has a lot of helpful information on citation format. This one: citationmachine.net/ helps you produce correctly formatted citations. Plagiarism Plagiarism can be defined as passing off someone’s words or ideas as your own. Plagiarism is a serious offense at HGTC. The usual minimum penalty for a first offense is a zero on the plagiarized assignment and notification of the Vice President for Academic Affairs. Copying someone else’s words into your lab report is plagiarism, even if you cite the source. The only way you can use someone else’s words is if you use quotes and cite the source; you should confine the use of quotes to short phrases if you use them at all. Slightly changing the wording of someone else’s words and putting them in your lab report is also plagiarism. Note that this includes the work of classmates and students from previous semesters, the lab manual, the textbook, the internet, and any other source. All lab reports must consist of your own individual writing. That’s the whole point. How to avoid plagiarism? Read a variety of resources on your topic. Then use what you read to write a summary of what you read in your own words. In lab reports, plagiarism is most common in the introduction and in the conclusions. However, I have had students copy the methods straight from the lab manual, including typos. Why is plagiarism a big deal? It’s a really big deal for writing that is published, but it’s still a big deal for us. If you’re just copying and pasting bits of information into your lab report, chances are you’re not really thinking and learning about the topic, and you’re certainly not practicing your writing skills. I check every written assignment for plagiarism; I would be doing a disservice to my students if I didn’t. The following sites provide much more information on what plagiarism is (and isn’t): http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/pamphlets/plagiarism.shtml#wwwplagiarism http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/ Works Cited Valiela. (2001). Doing science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc. How to Write a Really Bad Lab Report Don’t follow the guidelines and suggestions above. Example of a Really Bad Lab Report (with notes) Armadillidiidae is a family of woodlice, a terrestrial crustacean group in the order Isopoda. Unlike members of other woodlouse families, members of this family can roll into a ball, an ability they share with the outwardly similar but unrelated pill millipedes and other animals. It is this ability which gives woodlice in this family their common name of pill bugs, roly polies or potato bugs. The best known species in the family is Armadillidium vulgare, the common pill bug. (this introductory material is copied straight from Wikipedia, without even removing the hyperlinks. This is plagiarism) (there’s nothing here to introduce the experiment or its purpose. For this particular experiment, the introduction should include background on chemotaxis as well as pillbugs and their habits) We hypothesized that pillbugs would avoid all the substances. (why? And what were the substances?) 1. Observe the earthworm under the dissecting microscope, noting any body parts mentioned in lecture. 2. Place the earthworm in an empty tray and allow it to adjust to its surroundings for one minute. 3. Place several small amounts of the first substance all around the pan. 4. Observe the earthworm’s reaction to any substance for one minute. 5. Completely rinse the substance off the tray and off the worm. 6. Repeat. 7. Copy all group results into the table below to see if results are consistent (these methods are poorly copied from the lab manual – plagiarism- and involve earthworms, not pillbugs. Controls and variables, as well as substances used, are not identified.) Here are the results. In some groups, the pillbugs liked some things, but not others. (this does not count as a written summary of results. It’s too vague to be useful) Substance group 1 group 2 group 3 group 4 Vingar – + – – Sand + + + + Flour + + + + Water + + + + Sugar + + + + (Word has a “table” feature on the “insert” menu for constructing professional-looking tables. The one above doesn’t use this. It has no title or explanation of what “+” or “-“ actually mean. “vinegar” is misspelled) In conclusion, some pillbugs liked vinegar and some didn’t. My hypothesis was half-right. Pillbugs liked sand and flour and water and sugar. My hypothesis was wrong. There were many sources of error. (The purpose of having multiple test subjects is to get better data. You want to look at overall results in the conclusions section. 75% of pillbugs avoided vinegar. Why? A hypothesis is supported, not “right” or “half-right”. What were the reasons why pillbugs might have responded the way they did? What WERE some of the many sources of error? It would also be useful to finish with a summary of the experiment and what was learned.) (There is no “works cited” section. Although, remember that even if the author had cited Wikipedia for her copied introductory material, it would still count as plagiarism)

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