Physics 152.01 Laboratory Report Format

Physics 152.01 – Spring 2008

(Developed by Dr. George Spagna)

Laboratory Report Guidelines

While the laboratory work for this course is primarily designed to confirm basic principles, and thus enhance student understanding of content rather than seek to discover those principles, you will engage in formal written reports to gain further proficiency in discipline-appropriate technical writing. There are different manuals of style for scientific papers in physics, biology, chemistry, astronomy, etc. Note, also, that good technical writing is clean and straightforward – in a certain sense, “less is more.” Each journal will include in its “guidelines for authors” the specific rules for organization, citation of sources, etc. Failure to follow these rules typically results in a demand to rewrite - sometimes even the outright rejection of a paper - irrespective of the apparent scientific merit of the work presented.

Please keep in mind that, while you and your lab partners collectively “own” the data, your report must be your own, including the analysis of data. Also, be aware that falsely representing someone else’s data as your own is a violation of the Academic Integrity Code.

Your laboratory reports are to be prepared using Word or similar word-processing software, and should conform to the following format:

• Title – identify the experiment, e.g. “Laboratory #1, Light”
• Don’t forget to include your name! – You should also identify your lab partners by name
• Objective and procedure – state in a few sentences what the experiments were asking you to measure, and how you measured it. You should avoid casting this in terms of the course teaching goals. For example, rather than “The purpose of this lab was to study Snell’s Law,” you could write “The purpose of this experiment was to obtain the index of refraction of a sample of acrylic. We measured angles of incidence and refraction and applied Snell’s Law.” Do not write your procedure statement as a list of instructions! Where you feel it appropriate, you may include a diagram describing the apparatus and experimental setup. (See below for “figures and tables.”)
• Data and analysis – present your data in table format, including appropriate measurement uncertainties and error analysis. Describe the analysis, including appropriate mathematics. You do not need to show “sample calculations,” but it should be clear from your description how the measured data were converted to the results
• Conclusion – State your results and what they mean, for example “We determined the index of refraction for acrylic to be n = 1.48 ± .06. The stated index of refraction (n = 1.5) is confirmed within the experimental uncertainty.”
• Figures and tables – Figures, whether graphs or diagrams of experimental apparatus, should be clearly identified and made large enough to be easily read. They should be numbered sequentially as Figure 1, Figure 2, etc. Each should have a brief title identifying what is being shown, e.g. “Experimental apparatus for measuring index of refraction” or “Index of refraction for acrylic vs. wavelength.” Graph axes should be clearly labeled, including units. Tables, also sequentially numbered, informatively titled and with rows and columns clearly labeled, may be formatted easily in Word. However, you may find it more useful to set them up in a spreadsheet like Excel so that you can perform data manipulation directly in the table, then copy and paste into the lab report. Be careful with appropriate precision – don’t claim more significant figures than the measurement and uncertainties allow. Tables and figures should be explicitly referred to in the body of the report, e.g. “Data and results are found in Table 1, and graphed in Figure 1.” At your choice, tables and figures may be grouped at the end of the report.

Some comments on “grammar, spelling, etc.” –

• The overall report should not exceed 3-5 pages, including tables and figures. If it goes over this limit, you are writing too much! 
• The report should be written in past tense – you are reporting on what you have already done.
• Avoid the third person – refer to yourself and your lab partners as “I” and “we.”
• Avoid at all costs claiming to have “proved” or "found" something! At best, an experiment can confirm a result as lying within the uncertainty of what was expected.
• Proofread and check for spelling and grammatical errors! Spell check features in word processing software are a minimum first step, but will only tell you if a word is spelled incorrectly, not if it’s the right word. Watch out for homonyms (sound alike words) like to, too, or two.