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Guide To Writing A Lab Report

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21 views4 pages

Guide To Writing A Lab Report

Uploaded by

DOOAMADAA
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Basic guide to writing a scientific lab report in Metallurgy and

Materials

This is a short guide on how to write an effective scientific lab report. The main purpose of a
lab report is to communicate the findings of the work to others and help the reader to
understand them. This is an important skill to learn and reporting your findings is often a
significant part of a scientists/engineer’s role.

Formatting and style of writing

Language
In scientific writing, you must be clear and concise. You need to get the point you are trying
to make across to the reader in the minimum amount of words. The report should be
written in the past tense, third person passive voice.

Layout
The report needs to follow a logical and clear layout and typically, includes the following
sections (it can also include sub-heading where appropriate):

- Title and authors names


- Introduction
- Experimental Method
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusions
- References

Some reports might also include the following sections: Abstract/executive summary, Aims
and Objectives, Acknowledgements and Appendices.

Please make sure you use a sensible and consistent font, font size and line spacing
throughout. For example here – Calibri, font size 12, with a line spacing of 1.5.
Figures and Captions
All figures and tables should include appropriate captions. A caption should be able to be
understood without reading the rest of the report. They should standalone. Each table or
figure should also be referred to in the text at an appropriate point (e.g. Figure 1 shows…). If
the figure is not referred to then you should not include it in the report.

Any axes of graphs should be labelled clearly (with units) and any images taken need scale
bars and labels where appropriate.

What to include in each section

First page/Front cover


The first page should include the title of the work. This should be short and informative. This
should contain any key words. It also needs to include the authors’ names. In some cases, it
can also include an abstract and keywords.

Introduction
This section introduces and describes the aim of the work. It should also put the work into
context and explain why the work is being undertaken. It should contain:

- What the problem is and why it needs investigation


- Summary of any previous work conducted by others (or underlying theory) related to
the subject
- The aims and objectives of the work (this can be a separate section if preferred)

This section should be short and to the point, ideally less than one page, and should include
a number of references to support any statements made.

Experimental method
This should describe the methodology (materials, equipment and procedure) used to obtain
your results in detail. There needs to be enough detail to allow someone to repeat your
work and should be written in short and concise sentences. This is often the easiest section
to write, because it is just stating what you have done in a succinct way. Do not include any
results here, but images and schematic diagrams relevant to explaining what and how you
did something can be added.

Results
This section is for you to present your results, in a clear and concise way. The data should be
presented clearly in a form, which the reader can understand and interpret, and the use of
figures and tables is highly encouraged. The layout of the results should follow a logical
sequence and the use of sub-headings can be effective at doing this.

The interpretation of your results should not be discussed here, unless you are writing a
combined results and discussion section (in which case it is fine).

If using statistics, these need to be sensible and meaningful and in all cases, errors should be
given on all measurements where possible.

Discussion
This is often the hardest section to write well. You should discuss and interpret your results
here (but not just repeat your results). You are explaining what your results mean!

There are some questions which it might help to answer:

- Have your results achieved the aims outlined in the introduction?


- What are the consequences of your results?
- Do your results agreed with the published literature? If not, why don’t they?
- What are the implications of your results and are there any limitations?

Conclusions
In this section, you should provide a summary of the major findings, their interpretation and
consequences. It should bring them all together as a whole to give a short description of
what was achieved. It is important that no new information should be provided in this
section. If it is not discussed in the results and discussion section; you should not be
including it here.
References
Other people’s work should be correctly acknowledged and referenced. These inform the
reader where an idea or result came from. In your text, you should cite significant previous
work and then provide the full reference at the end of the document.

If you do not acknowledge the source of the idea or figure etc. you are using in your work,
this is considered plagiarism. Plagiarism is a serious academic integrity issue, which if found
guilty carries academic penalties.

References should be complete and listed at the end of the document, including author’s
names, title, name of the journal or book publisher, volume, year and page numbers. There
are a number of different reference styles, most of which are appropriate. The numbered
style (or Vancouver System) is probably the easiest and most commonly used style in
scientific writing. A guide to using this style is included on the canvas page.

A university guide on how to reference correctly is provided here, with examples of the
referencing styles you can use. This includes the providing information on software available
which can help you reference correctly - e.g. Endnote or RefWorks

https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/as/libraryservices/library/referencing/icite/index.aspx

Appendices
These can be included to provide the reader with extra information, which would otherwise
interrupt the flow of the main text but which you think, is important to include. These can
include raw data, measurements or extra figures. You must refer to the appendix in the
main body of text (i.e. see appendix 1) at the appropriate point so that the reader realises
that the extra material is available.

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