After several times became lab assistant in international class, I found most of students didn't know how to make report. Most of them said that they were very blur.. they didn't understand the experiment. Beside that, I got that most don't know what should they write in each part of the report. Therefore, here I write the points that should be in report.
- Cover. Write the subject name and its code, the title of the experiment, your name and your student ID (or your group's), the date of experiment, the date of report submission, your assistant's name and student ID, campus logo, laboratory name, school name, campus name, current year. Max. score. 5/100.
- Objectives. You can use the objectives from the lab manual as long as the objectives are something that can be concluded. For example, if the objective is "After the experiment, students able to assemble distillation apparatus." What will you conclude then? If you find this kind of objectives in your lab manual, then please think the better one for your report. Max. score 5/100.
- Basic Principle. Summarize the related theory for current experiment. For example if you got acid-base titration for aspirin experiment, the basic principle should be about the aspirin titration only. You don't have to write long part here.. 1 paragraph is enough. Max. score 10/100.
- Materials & Apparatus. This part seems to be unimportant, so most write this part perfunctorily. If this part unimportant, why this part do exist in every journals?
Report material and apparatus you used when you did the experiment. Don't report other material or apparatus you didn't use although they are written in your lab manual. Max. score. 5/100.
- Procedures. Never retype the procedures in lab manual to your lab report. You have to report the procedures that you did. Lab manual only as guidance, sometimes it is very general.. whereas in the experiment it's already specific. Max. score 10/100.
- Observation. Report all things you observed. If you used any symbol /abbreviation please attach the meaning of the symbol/abbreviation. If you used table, give the identity to the table. Please make as neat as possible to make the data nice to be read and easy to be understood. Max. score 10/100
- Calculation. In this part you have to process the data to the needed form. For example, in titration experiment, the data are volume of needed titrant, molarity of the titrant, in calculation you calculate to get the concentration of sample. Please make the calculation as neat as possible, so it is easier for me to check :P. Max. score 10/100.
- Discussion. This is the main part of the report. Please only discuss related things to the experiment. If you in instrumental analysis lab don't discuss about pharmacology (although your sample is drug), don't discuss about the instrument too much (like the history of its discovery.. come on there's no relation at all). You have to discuss about the experiment, if the experiment as the expectation or not. Then discuss what you find in literature, it is the same with your experiment? Use your analytical skill to write this part. Max. Score 35/100
- Conclusion. The ending part. Did your objectives achieved? Max. score 5/100
- References. Write all references that you used. Please write in correct format. Please note you can't use lecture note or blog post like this as your reference. Max. score 5/100.
Snapshot of a lab report :D |
1 comments:
An example would help
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