Title and abstract. Submitted lab reports should begin with the name of the course, instructor, an unambiguous informative title of the experiment (not just “lab 3”), date(s) the work was performed, date the report is submitted. This should be followed by a brief abstract which includes the purpose of the experiment and enough of the methods to make clear that they are suitable for achieving the objectives.
Introduction and hypothesis testing. Establish context by more completely describing the experiment. What question is being asked? Some experimental work is hypothesis-driven, but for students and at the early stages of a project, one undertakes an exploratory phase by making observations and looking for patterns. Try to formulate a hypothesis. If there is one, it should be stated and results should be interpreted in light of the hypothesis. Literature and internet references should be cited and listed in a separate section at the end of the report.
Methods. Describe the experimental procedures completely. Parts of the Methods can be taken from distributed materials but additional details should be included. The methods should be clear enough so that a student could successfully repeat the experiment.
Results. Observations, measurements, tables, plots (axes should be labeled), experimental data. Figures should be numbered and described in figure legends. Tables and figures should be referred to in the text of the report. Results should be understandable and data should be described and presented in complete sentences and paragraphs in the text, as well as in figures, tables, etc.
Interpretation and Conclusions. A lab report should not end with Results. What do the results mean? Extensive interpretation is required, in a separate section. State whether the experiment “worked” and what it means for the experiment to have worked or not. Experiments lead to new experiments – what about in this case? If you continued working on the project, what would you do next?
Source Material and References. Do use and cite references, including your lab manual, textbook and internet resources. Do not copy text from any source – that would be plagiarism. Do paraphrase; do not quote. Useful figures from internet sources can be downloaded and copied into your report, but always include the URL for the web page with the figure and in the references.

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