Get a lab report that fully describes your experiment.
Components of a Good Lab Report
1. Title Page
This will follow the guidelines of the major writing styles such as APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, ASA, and so on. It will depend on the instructor’s instructions or the university main writing style. Some of the components of the title page will include:
- The title of the experiment.
- Student’s name or the names of the group members (for group experiments)
- The instructor's name.
- The date the experiment was performed or the date the report was submitted.
2. Introduction or Purpose
Write at least a paragraph explaining the objectives or purpose of the experiment. Remember to state the hypothesis so that the reader can understand the expected outcomes. Also, you should summarize the whole procedure and state the findings. What were your conclusions?
3. Materials
A list of all materials needed to complete the experiment.
4. Methods/Procedure
This is a description of all the steps for conducting the experiment. It should provide sufficient details such that anyone can read it and duplicate your experiment and obtain the same results. In short, it should be written as if you are telling someone else how to conduct the experiment. It is crucial to provide a figure or a diagram of your experimental setup.
5. Data
If there are numerical data, please present them in tabular form.
6. Results/Findings
A written description of what the data obtained means.
7. Discussion or Analysis
If the data is numerical, this section should contain calculations made using those numbers. Afterward, the data is interpreted to determine whether to accept or reject the hypothesis made earlier. You can also discuss any errors that might have occurred during the experiment and how the errors may have affected the results. Explain how the experiment can be improved in case errors were made.
8. Conclusions
A is a single paragraph summarizing the experiment, whether the hypothesis was accepted or rejected, and an interpretation of the findings.
9. Figures and Graphs
For numerical data, you can provide properly labelled graphs in the appendix section. Make sure that the independent variable appears on the Y-axis while the dependent variable appears on the X-axis.
10. References
If you borrowed knowledge from another work, make sure you cite it appropriately as per the writing style mentioned in the instruction