Lab Report Format
Labs are an extremely important and helpful part of the climate course in
that they require you to think in depth and detail about its material on a
regular basis. While each lab may differ slightly in its mechanics, below
are outlined some general recommendations for completing each lab and its
associated lab report which will facilitate the exercise for both you and
the people evaluating your lab reports.
BEFORE LAB:
Read through the instructions for the lab exercise.
Ask yourself:
- What are the goals of the lab exercise?
- What data will be examined? How will an examination of this data help
to achieve the goals of the lab exercise?
- If there are several data sets, are there any physical relationships
we know that relate the variables?
AT LAB:
Work through the exercise. Consider the answers to any questions asked in
the exercise as notes for the scientific essay you will hand in.
As you work through the exercise, you should constantly be asking yourself:
- What are the relationships you observe in the data?
- Do you know of any underlying physical principles which might produce
the relationships you observe?
- Is there a common theme to the relationships you observe in the
data? Are these relationships relevant to the goals of the lab?
LAB REPORT FORMAT:
After each lab you will complete a 1-2 page report carefully constructed to
express your major observations and findings. Keep in mind the
comprehensive and detailed format you may have encountered in lab reports
for other science courses: could someone duplicate your experiments upon
reading your report? The brevity of your report requires that you attempt
a concise writing style, touching only upon your most important
observations and results. Nevertheless, you must also present as much
supporting detail as is necessary to support your conclusions and allow the
reader to understand the logic by which you obtained them.
Think of the report as a scientific essay. It will have a title and
sections containing:
- Introduction
- Procedure
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
A brief description of what should be included in each of these
sections is included below.
-
Title.
The title should summarize, as specifically as possible, the
subject of the lab.
-
Introduction.
Your introductory paragraphs must include:
- Purpose: A single, concise statement of the major objective of the lab,
i.e. what are the questions you are tying to answer.
- Background: A brief summary of the topic being investigated, including any
information which may be necessary in order to understand your stated
purpose of the lab.
- State the major results/findings of the lab exercise.
- Procedure. Include the information necessary to allow someone to
repeat what you did.
- What data did you use?
- Include geographic locations, definitions of key terms, and anything
else necessary in order to understand exactly what you did.
- Observations and Results.
- What did you observe in each part? Include all observations made at the
suggestion of the lab exercises. Always include the units of physical
quantities and label axes of plots.
- Describe any relationships that you observed between variables.
- Where appropriate include figures, graphs and calculations.
- Discussion. This is the most important part of the lab, as it is
where you interpret your observations and results.
- Give explanations for and implications of any relationships observed.
Were the relationships as you expected from underlying physical principles?
- What are the main sources of uncertainty in interpreting your
observations?
- Address any interesting questions you may have had as you were working
through the lab exercises, as well any general questions included in the lab
exercises.
- Can you make any generalizations? Why or why not?
- Conclusion. Summarize your results, the main points of your
discussion, and how they relate to your stated purpose of the lab. It is a
good idea to include how the main points of your discussion are connected,
in order to demonstrate the overall significance of your findings and the
concepts you learned.
AFTER WRITING YOUR ESSAY:
- Make sure your writing is clear. If you read it aloud to yourself or a
friend, does it make sense? Don't forget to use the spell-checker in your
word processor.
- Check to be sure you addressed all the questions included in the lab
exercise.