Writing Scientific Reports for Junior Lab Using LATEX

Fiz A. Cist∗
MIT Department of Physics
(Dated: July 23, 2014)
This paper is a written summary and template document for use by MIT Physics Junior Lab
students like you in preparing your experimental reports. It uses LATEX (pronounced lay-tek or
lah-tek, but never lay-teks) and the REVTEX macro package from the American Physical Society
to produce a professional quality document. REVTEX is the standard package used to prepare
most articles in the Physical Review and many other journals as well. This example template
demonstrates several common LATEX “tricks”, but the extent of the examples may be too much for
first time LATEX users. A simpler “minimal example” template is also available from the Junior Lab
web pages. In regards to content, the individual summary you hand in should show evidence of your
own mastery of the entire experiment. It should also possess a neat appearance with concise and
correct English. The abstract is essential. It should briefly mention the motivation, the method, and
most importantly the quantitative result and its uncertainties. Based on those elements, readers
may drawn their own conclusion. The length of the paper should be no more than two double-sided
pages including all figures. With your instructor’s advanced permission, appendices can be used for
additional plots of raw data, but should not be used to simply extend turgid prose!

An important part of your education as a physicist I. PROBLEM AND RELEVANT THEORY

is learning to use standard tools which enable you to
share your work with others. In Junior Lab, you will be The report should be type-written in a form that would
instructed in the use of LATEX on either MIT’s Athena be suitable for submission as a manuscript for publica-
environment or your own personal computer. You will tion in a professional journal such as Physical Review
learn to write scientific papers in a widely accepted pro- Letters. One helpful resource is the APS Physical Re-
fessional style. The source file for this document may be view Style and Notation Guide [2]. Another is the AIP
used as a template for your Junior Lab papers. Spend- Style Manual [3]. Figures (created as PDF or PNG files)
ing a few hours studying and altering this document will should be inserted into the text in their natural positions.
allow you to develop sufficient mastery of LATEX to eas- The body of the summary should include a discussion of
ily generate all manner of technical documents. Specific the theoretical issues addressed by the experiment. This
instructions for compiling LATEX documents on various should be done at a level such that another 8.13 student
operating systems are contained in the Appendices. could follow your development.
One of the most important resources for developing
The writing process [1] involves at least four distinct
into a strong technical writer is the MIT Writing Center
steps: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. Given
[4]. Students should thoroughly investigate the resources
the tight time constraints in Junior Lab, you are advised
on this site in the first weeks of 8.13. Note that students
to begin the drafting process before finishing your lab
can receive free consultation — online or in person — on
sessions. While final results and analysis are not possible,
their written reports through this office!
much of the draft can be accomplished during the latter
The essence of expository writing is the communica-
sessions of an experiment.
tion of understanding through a clear and concise pre-
This is the introductory section of the paper. Your in- sentation of predominately factual material [5, 6]. Most
troduction should succinctly report the motivation, pur- people cannot compose successful expository prose un-
pose, and relevant background to the experiment in way less they put the need to communicate foremost among
that is accessible to your audience. For Junior Lab, the their priorities. Two things predominate in generating
appropriate audience is a stereotypical Junior Lab stu- understanding in the reader:
dent who has background knowledge and experience sim- Organization: The reader must be provided with an
ilar to your own, but is totally unfamiliar with your ex- overview or outline, know how each fact that he
periment. reads fits into that overall picture, and he must be
alerted if it is an especially important fact. Fur-
thermore, the facts must be presented in a logical
order, so that fact 17 is not important for under-
standing fact 12.
Uniform depth of presentation: Bearing in mind the
∗ [email protected]; http://web.mit.edu/8.13/ preexisting knowledge of the reader, the writer
must budget the length of discussion allotted to
each topic in proportion to its importance.
 2

Of course clarity of presentation and elegance of explana- • Trace the origin of formulae you use (e.g. Moseley’s
tion will greatly enhance the ease and pleasure of under- law) to well known physics (in this case, to the
standing; still, a murky explanation can be fairly useful Bohr atom). Do not derive: just indicate what
if the reader has been told what he is reading about and new assumptions are needed.
where it fits into the overall scheme of things — espe-
cially if the reader is familiar with the general subject Please consult the MIT Writing and Communications
matter under discussion. Center’s web page [4] for further guidance in all aspects
The Junior Lab write-up is one of the few opportuni- of writing, style, and to make appointments with consul-
ties undergraduate physics majors at MIT are given to tants for free advice. They even have an online tutor to
practice technical writing. Thus, you are urged to con- which you can submit sections of your paper for critique
centrate on your overall presentation, not only on the at any stage of the writing process!
facts themselves. We strongly recommend that you: Lastly: Remember to proofread your paper for spelling
and grammar mistakes. Few things are as offensive to
1. Base your report on an outline. a reviewer as careless writing. Such mistakes will count
against you!
2. Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence which
expresses the main area of concern and the main
conclusion of the paragraph. Put less important II. EXPERIMENTAL SKETCH AND SALIENT
DETAILS
material later in the paragraph.

Point 2 is frequently absent in 8.13 reports. Topic sen- Here is an example first sentence of an experimental
tences are your mechanism for telling the reader what the section: The experimental apparatus consists of a spe-
topic under discussion is and where it fits into the overall cially prepared chemical sample containing 13 CHCl3 , an
picture. You can check your topic sentences by reading NMR spectrometer, and a control computer, as shown in
them in order, i.e. omit all the following sentences in Fig. 1.
each paragraph. This should give a fair synopsis of your This section describes the main components of the
paper. apparatus and procedures used. It always makes ref-
If you are individually writing up results you obtained erence to a figure(s) which contains a block diagram
with a partner, use “we” and “I” appropriately. Note or schematic of the apparatus and perhaps includes
the following admonition from the AIP Style Manual [3, the most important signal processing steps. The figure
Section III.A.9]: should be referenced as early as possible in this section
with the placement of the figure as close to the descrip-
The old taboo against using the first person tive text as is possible. It is usually necessary to place
in formal prose has long been deplored by additional information within the figures themselves or
the best authorities and ignored by some of in their captions for which there is no room in the main
the best writers. “We” may be used natu- body of text. This will help you stay within the four page
rally by two or more authors in referring to limit.
themselves; “we” may also be used to refer to
a single author and the author’s associates.
A single author should also use “we” in the II.1. Typesetting Mathematics
common construction that politely includes
the reader: “We have already seen. . . .” But One of the great powers of LATEX is its ability to typeset
never use “we” as a mere substitute for “I,” all manner of mathematical expressions. While it does
as in, for example, “In our opinion. . . ,”which take a short while to get used to the syntax, it will soon
attempts modesty and achieves the reverse; become second nature. Numbered, single-line equations
either write “my” or resort to a genuinely im- are the most common type of equation in Junior Lab
personal construction. papers. For example,
 
Use the past tense for your procedure and analysis, the −1/2 |p| + pz
χ+ (p) . [2|p|(|p| + pz )] . (1)
past perfect for preparation and the present for emphasis px + ipy
or conclusions. For example, “Since we had previously
measured constructive and destructive interference, we Be sure there is no empty line in your LATEX source code
concluded that electrons are waves.” between \end{equation} and the following body text
Some further tips: unless you want a new paragraph to start there (and be
indented). Also, remember to punctuate your equations
• Be sure your figures have comprehensible captions. according to their usage as parts of sentences.
Mathematics can also be placed directly in the text
• Make a complete estimate of your errors — not just using $ deliminators: the energy E is related to the mass
statistical — even if it is crude. m via E = mc2 , where c is the speed of light. As in
 3

m ix e r
s a m p le tu b e

c a p a c ito r
d ire c tio n a l R F c o m p u te r
c o u p le r o s c illa to r

a m p lifie r

B 0

s ta tic fie ld
R F c o il c o il

FIG. 1. This is a schematic of the main apparatus. Use the caption space to elaborate on specific issues, complications, or
operating procedures. This is especially valuable given the limited amount of space in the main body of text. The size of this
graphic was set by the width command option. The aspect ratio defaults to 1.0 if the height is not also set. Note, this figure
spans two columns, instead of just one. This effect was accomplished using the figure* environment instead of just figure.
Use this effect sparingly: single-column figures should suffice in most circumstances. Adapted from [7, 8].

the previous sentence, you should use this construction align on the page. It uses the align environment:
not just for whole equations in running text, but also for
referring to individual variables by name: otherwise the ψ~1 = |ψ1 i
variables will be set in different typefaces when appearing ≡ c0 |0i + c1 |1iχ2
in text versus equations. (3)
Y X  yi − f (xi ) 2
Infrequently, you may wish to typeset long equations ≈ |ψ1 i
σi
which span more than one line of a two-column page. A 1 2
good solution is to split up the equation into multiple Q(z) ∼ lim p(x; µ) ≥ √ e−(x−µ) /2µ P (x) (4)
lines and label all lines with a single equation number, as
µ→∞ 2πµ
Z x
in Equation (2). See the LATEX source to see how this is α(δ)  p(x0 )dx0 a × b ± c (5)
done using the multline environment. −∞
ℵ ⇒ r~. (6)
X There are in fact several useful environments2 for split-
|Mgviol |2 = gS2n−4 (Q2 ) N n−2 (N 2 − 1) ting equations across multiple lines, but if you do not
want to memorize them all, then just use the align en-
⎛ ⎞
X X 1 1 X
×⎝ ⎠ cfτ . (2) vironment. You may encounter older LATEX code which
i<j perm
S 12 S12 τ instead uses the eqnarray environment for this pur-
pose. Use of the eqnarray environment is deprecated
and should be avoided.
Since LATEX does not know mathematical grammar, you
have to tell it the appropriate place to split the input
using the \\ sequence. Here is an example of not simply 2 For example, Equation (3) gathers several typeset lines as one
splitting a long equation across lines, but also having logical equation using the split environment inside the align
multiple equations for which the equality signs should environment.
 4

Finally, it is often useful to group related equa- indented on both sides or enclosed in quotes,
tions to denote their relationship, e.g. in a deriva- and attribution must be given immediately in
tion. Enclosing single line and multiline equations in the form of a reference note. [7]
\begin{subequations} and \end{subequations} will
If you have any question at all about attribution of
produce a set of equations that are “numbered” with let-
sources, please see your section instructor. Further infor-
ters, as shown in Equations (7a) and (7b) below:
mation about how to avoid plagiarism is available from

1
Pa  the MIT Writing Center at http://goo.gl/7PwXJe.
f (u)n = abc123def + αβγδ − 1234556αβ 2 b /42,
A
(7a) III. DATA PRESENTATION AND ERROR
ANALYSIS
2
M = igZ (4E1 E2 )1/2 (li2 )−1 (gσe 2 )2 χ−σ2 (p2 )
× [i ]σ1 χσ1 (p1 ). (7b) Graphics, such as Fig. 2, should be well thought out
and crafted to maximize their information content while
retaining clarity of expression.
II.2. Plagiarism: Don’t Do It

It is worth mentioning here some thoughts on ethics Determination of Fine Structure Splitting
140
and writing in science. Gauss3 Dataset
When you read the report of a physics experiment in 120
a reputable journal (e.g. Physical Review Letters) you
can generally assume it represents an honest effort by 100

the authors to describe exactly what they observed. You

Signal [cps]
80
may doubt the interpretation or the theory they create
to explain the results. But at least you trust that if 60

you repeat the manipulations as described, you will get

40
essentially the same experimental results. 2 2
Model: y(x) =a1e−b1x+a2*e−((x−b2)/c2) +a3*e−((x−b3)/c3)
χ2ν−1 = 0.82
Nature is the ultimate enforcer of truth in science. 20
Energy Splitting = 36.1±0.3nm
If subsequent work proves a published measurement is
0
wrong by substantially more than the estimated error
50 100 150 200 250
limits, a reputation shrinks. If fraud is discovered, a ca- Wavelength [bin]
reer may be ruined. So most professional scientists are
very careful about the records they maintain and the re-
sults and errors they publish. FIG. 2. Sample figure describing a set of data, fit pro-
In keeping with the spirit of trust in science, Junior Lab cedures and results, created using the Junior Lab Mat-
instructors will assume that what you record in your lab lab template script at http://web.mit.edu/8.13/matlab/
book and report in your written and oral presentations fittemplate11.m. Use the caption space to provide more de-
is exactly what you have observed. tails about the fitting procedure, results, or implications if
Fabrication or falsification of data, using the re- you do not have sufficient room in the main body of text.
sults of another person’s work without acknowl-
edgement, or copying from the internet or “living All papers should have at least one graphic showing
group bibles” are intellectual crimes as serious as an assemblage of raw data, sometimes placed as an ap-
plagiarism, and possible causes for dismissal from pendix as in Fig. 4. Often these primary data are ana-
the Institute. lyzed in a specific way that needs to be clearly commu-
The acknowledgement of other people’s data also ap- nicated to the reader. In many physics experiments, the
plies to the use of other people’s rhetoric. The appropri- peak positions in an energy spectrum may be required.
ate way to incorporate an idea which you have learned A graphic demonstrating a typical fit result, functional
from a textbook or other reference is to study the point model, and reduced χ2 is shown in Fig. 2. Finally, there
until you understand it and then put the text aside and should be one graphic which summarizes the experimen-
state the idea in your own words. tal data, and which conveys the primary finding(s) of
One often sees, in a scientific journal, phrases such as the laboratory exercise (e.g. the Geiger-Nuttall relation-
“Following Bevington and Melissinos [7, 9] . . . ” This ship in Fig. 3, Moseley’s law, the rotation curve of the
means that the author is following the ideas or logic of Milky Way, the Compton scattering energies vs. angle,
these authors and not their exact words. etc.). You may find that you need more, but these three
If you do choose to quote material, it is not sufficient should be a minimum. Finally, it can be useful in some
just to include the original source among the list of refer- circumstances to have a table of results, see Table I.
ences at the end of your paper. If a few sentences or more If you reuse graphics from your paper in oral presenta-
are imported from another source, that section should be tion slides, make sure to increase the size of all the fonts
 5

so that they remain legible from 20 feet away! If circumstances in an experiment are such that you
cannot get your own data (e.g. broken equipment, bad
weather), you may use another students’ data provided
you acknowledge it and have received your instructor’s
Test of the theoretical Geiger−Nuttall Relationship explicit permission.
10
French and Taylor (1978)

IV. CONCLUSIONS
log10 γ

−5

−10 Fit Slope = −145 ± 5 The conclusion section is not simply a summary of your
measurement results, but rather a commentary on the
−15
1/2
Barrier Penetrability ∼ Ae−C/E
scientific meaning of those results. Remember to report
log10γ = const − 155/E1/2
MeV
your results with appropriate significant digits, units, and
uncertainties, e.g. Q = (2.12 ± 0.06) kg·s−1 . It is often
−20
0.32 0.34 0.36 0.38 0.4 0.42 0.44 0.46 0.48 0.5 useful to express the quality of your result by measur-
E−1/2 ing how many standard deviations it lies from expected
values. Do not apologize or make excuses for your data.
Bibliographies are very important in Junior Lab pa-
FIG. 3. Sample figure showing overall physical relationship
you set out to test, created using the same script as Fig. 2.
pers, so some remarks are in order. Beyond the requisite
citation of source material, they provide evidence of your
investigations beyond the narrow scope of the lab man-
Try to avoid the temptation to inundate the reader ual, something explicitly required of all Junior Lab stu-
with too many graphics. It is worth spending some time dents! Good bibliographies are doubly important in the
thinking of how best to present information rather than real world where they are very (often the most) important
just creating graph after graph of uninformative data. sources of information for researchers entering the field.
All figures and tables must be properly captioned. As Bibliographic entries are made within a separate .bib
always, material and ideas drawn from the work of others file which gets attached during process of building a final
must be properly cited. PDF document. See this document’s sample-paper.bib
file for details on several types of bibliographic entries and
TABLE I. An example table with footnotes. Note that several their required and optional fields.
entries share the same footnote. Always use a preceding zero
in the data you record in tables. Always display units! Inspect
the LATEX source for this table to see exactly how it is done.

rc (Å) r0 (Å) κr0 rc (Å) r0 (Å) κr0

a
Cu 0.800 14.10 2.550 Sn 0.680 1.870 3.700 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ag 0.990 15.90 2.710 Pba 0.450 1.930 3.760
Tl 0.480 18.90 3.550
FAC gratefully acknowledges Dr. Francine Brown for
a Here is the first footnote mark, from Ref. [9]. her early reviews of this manuscript.

[1] “The Writing Process,” http://cmsw.mit.edu/ 1998).

writing-and-communication-center/resources/ [6] D. Pritchard, “Junior lab written report notes,” (1990).
writers/writing-process/ (2014). [7] A. Melissinos, Experiments in Modern Physics (Academic
[2] A. Waldron, P. Judd, and V. Miller, Physical Review Style Press, 1966).
and Notation Guide, American Physical Society (2011). [8] A. Melissinos and J. Napolitano, “Experiments in modern
[3] AIP Style Manual , American Institute of Physics, 4th ed. physics,” (Academic Press, 2003) Chap. 5, pp. 179–184,
(1990). 2nd ed.
[4] “MIT Writing Center,” http://cmsw.mit.edu/ [9] P. Bevington and D. Robinson, Data Reduction and Error
writing-and-communication-center/ (2014). Analysis for the Physical Sciences (McGraw-Hill, 2003).
[5] L. C. Perelman, J. Paradis, and E. Barrett, The Mayfield
Handbook of Technical and Scientific Writing (Mayfield,
 6

Appendix A: LATEX on Windows > pwd

For students who would like to use a Windows plat- The following files should now be in your current direc-
form, MiKTEX (pronounced mik-tek ) is a freely available tory:
sample-paper.tex
implementation of TEX and related programs available
sample-paper.bib
from www.miktex.org. Note that MiKTEX itself runs
sample-paper.pdf
from a command line prompt and is not terribly conve-
sample-fig1.pdf
nient unless you are comfortable with the Windows shell.
sample-fig2.pdf
Luckily, MiKTEX comes packaged with the TEXworks
sample-fig3.pdf
editting environment as a front end to LATEX. Many be-
typical-fit-plot.pdf
ginners find TEXworks easier and more intuitive to use
frenchtaylor.pdf
than the alternative of a generic text editor and command
lgrind.sty
line compliation. Advanced users may prefer a more pow-
erful editor like Emacs or vi instead of a LATEX-specific Additional files may also have been copied but do not
editor like TEXworks. worry: these get regenerated when you build your PDF
Note that due to some “bad” distributions of LATEX document.
floating around the internet, some Windows users may
Now build the file (omitting the .tex suffix in the fol-
need to update their LATEX installation to the latest
lowing steps):
version of REVTEX-4.1 and the required natbib pack-
age. Alternatively, they can use the older REVTEX-4 by > pdflatex sample-paper
changing the \documentclass declaration at the begin- > bibtex sample-paper
ning of the source file. You will know if you need to do > pdflatex sample-paper
this if you attempt to compile this sample document and > pdflatex sample-paper
receive errors about bad bibliography entries.
Once you have installed the above software, you will The repeated calls to pdflatex are necessary to resolve
need to download the source files listed in the next sec- any nested references in the final PDF file. The bibtex
tion and put them on your Windows machine in order to call reads in the bibliography file sample-paper.bib al-
“rebuild” this document from scratch. lowing citation references to be resolved.
Remember to “ispell -t filename.tex” to per-
form a LATEX-safe spell check before handing in
Appendix B: LATEX on Athena
your paper!

For students wishing to utilize MIT’s Athena environ-

ment, the process to create your documents is quite sim- Appendix C: Graphics Utilities
ple. You can use the following commands verbatim or
tweak them to suit your own organizational system.
In your home directory on Athena, create a convenient Students should become proficient with a simple vector
directory structure for all of your Junior Lab work by based drawing program such as inkscape. Every writ-
typing: ten summary should include one or two simple schemat-
ics, based on your initial hand sketches from your lab
> mkdir ~/8.13 notebook
> mkdir ~/8.13/papers It is easy to convert images from one format to an-
> mkdir ~/8.13/papers/template other, e.g. a scanned JPEG or bitmap image into a PDF
> cd ~/8.13/papers/template file for inclusion into a written summary. A useful utility,
available on some Unix machines, is imconvert. Typing
Once this (or similar) directory structure has been cre- imconvert without any arguments will show you the ac-
ated, copy all of the files needed to compile the template cepted file types. Other useful conversion utilities include
from the Junior Lab locker into your own Athena account ps2pdf, eps2pdf, and a variety of similar programs.
by typing: Matlab is perhaps the most common tool used by
> cp /mit/8.13/www/Samplepaper/sample-zipped/* . Junior Lab students for data analysis and representation.
Matlab figures can incorporate LATEX symbols in their
The final period above places the copied files into the titles, axes labels, and text labels. Figures can be saved
current directory so make sure you are in the correct directly into PDF or PNG format, obviating the need for
directory! You can see where you are by typing: any further format conversion.
 subplot(2,2,1) subplot(2,2,2)
150 150

100 100

50 50

Counts
Counts
0 0

−50 −50
−100 0 100 200 300 −100 0 100 200 300
Energy MeV Energy MeV

subplot(2,2,3) subplot(2,2,4)
150 150

100 100

50 50

Counts
Counts

0 0

−50 −50
−100 0 100 200 300 −100 0 100 200 300
Energy MeV Energy MeV

FIG. 4. For very large plots where important detail might be lost if too compressed, it may be convenient to use the turnpage environment for displaying in landscape
mode, e.g. any experiment where a data set is acquired at several angular positions (21 cm, e/m, Rutherford), or is time varying (alpha decay or pulsed NMR).
These full page graphics are usually best kept in appendices so as not to impede the flow of the paper. Note that large tables can also be presented in this landscape
7

environment if desired
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8.13-14 Experimental Physics I & II "Junior Lab"

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