Formal Lab Report Text

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Dolphin iowa state university verbal communication is temporal and easily forgotten, but written reports exist for long periods and yield long term benefits for the author and others. Individual scientists perform experiments to test hypotheses about biological phenomena. After experiments are completed and duplicated, researchers attempt to persuade others to accept or reject their hypotheses by presenting the data and their interpretations. The lab report or the scientific paper is the vehicle of persuasion when it is published, it is available to other scientists for review.

If the results stand up to criticism, they become part of the accepted body of scientific knowledge unless later disproved. The title should be less than ten words and should reflect the factual content of the paper. A good title is straightforward and uses keywords that researchers in a particular field will recognize. The purpose of an abstract is to allow the reader to judge whether it would serve his or her purposes to read the entire report. A good abstract is a concise 100 to 200 words summary of the purpose of the report, the data presented, and the author's major conclusions. It must outline the scientific purpose s or objective s for the research performed and give the reader sufficient background to understand the rest of the report.

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Care should be taken to limit the background to whatever is pertinent to the experiment. A good introduction will answer several questions, including the following: why was this study performed? answers to this question may be derived from observations of nature or from the literature. what knowledge already exists about this subject? the answer to this question must review the literature, showing the historical development of an idea and including the confirmations, conflicts, and gaps in existing knowledge. what is the specific purpose of the study? the specific hypotheses and experimental design pertinent to investigating the topic should be described.

materials and methods

as the name implies, the materials and methods used in the experiments should be reported in this section. The difficulty in writing this section is to provide enough detail for the reader to understand the experiment without overwhelming him or her.

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When procedures from a lab book or another report are followed exactly, simply cite the work, noting that details can be found in that particular source. However, it is still necessary to describe special pieces of equipment and the general theory of the assays used. This can usually be done in a short paragraph, possibly along with a drawing of the experimental apparatus.

Generally, this section attempts to answer the following questions: what materials were used? how were they used? where and when was the work done? this question is most important in field studies. the results section should summarize the data from the experiments without discussing their implications. The data should be organized into tables, figures, graphs, photographs, and so on. All figures and tables should have descriptive titles and should include a legend explaining any symbols, abbreviations, or special methods used. Figures and tables should be numbered separately and should be referred to in the text by number, for example:

    figure 1 shows that the activity decreased after five minutes.
figures and tables should be self explanatory that is, the reader should be able to understand them without referring to the text. This section of your report should concentrate on general trends and differences and not on trivial details.

Many authors organize and write the results section before the rest of the report.

discussion

this section should not just be a restatement of the results but should emphasize interpretation of the data, relating them to existing theory and knowledge. Suggestions for the improvement of techniques or experimental design may also be included here.

In writing this section, you should explain the logic that allows you to accept or reject your original hypotheses. You should also be able to suggest future experiments that might clarify areas of doubt in your results.

literature cited

this section lists all articles or books cited in your report.

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