LAB REPORT GUIDELINES

Welcome to Fundamental of Electrical Engineering Labs here at the University of Bahir Dar. As
your Teaching Assistant for labs, I want to help you understand Fundamental of Electrical
Engineering. Why? Because, not only do I love Electrical Engineering, but I also love teaching it
to others.

Regarding the labs; they are wonderful from the standpoint of being able to provide accurate and
reproducible experiments that demonstrate fundamental properties of Electrical Engineering. If you
follow the instructions in the lab book precisely, you’re almost assured of highly accurate results.
However, sometimes the MEANING of what the experiments represent is lost on students,
precisely BECAUSE the experiments, in an attempt to make the labs so precise, have become
somewhat convoluted. This is why I usually take a few minutes to explain what the underlying
Electrical Engineering principles are, as well as how they are being shown in a particular
experiment. If I write comments on your paper, think about what those comments mean; if you’re
not sure, ask. I want you to be a better writer, and have a better understanding of the material.
Part the process of helping you understand what’s going on is writing the lab reports. This is
because one of the best ways to learn something is to have to explain it to someone else. Below are
some guidelines for the process of writing up your lab reports. I discuss the labs report section by
section you should break your lab report up into the same sections I have used below. In general,
lab reports should be typed (an optional exception is the calculations section), neat, and easy to
read.

PURPOSE AND METHOD:

This is the most important portion of the lab report, and consequently has the most points assigned
to it. In this section you should show me that you understood what the purpose of the lab was, and
what the underlying Electrical Engineering principles were. As a hint, the purpose of the lab
experiment is usually to verify a particular law or relationship Electrical Engineering. The purpose
of a lab report is almost NEVER the purpose stated in the lab manual. On a related note, do not
copy from the lab manual or any other sources. I consider this plagiarism, and if I am feeling
benevolent, I will merely assign a grade of zero for the purpose and method section. If I am not
feeling benevolent, or you’ve made a habit of copying from other sources, I’ll make the entire grade
zero. Using your own words is important, because it is the process of restructuring and rephrasing
the material covered in the lectures and manual that helps you understand the material. If you need
help understanding what was happening, feel free to email me, come by my office or lab, or get
help in the tutoring center, but do NOT copy material wholesale.

The lab report, in addition to explaining the major goal of the experiment, should discuss any
potential errors and how you accommodated for them. Most people find they can discuss these
concepts adequately in 1 or at most 2 pages. Occasionally, someone will be able to convey the
information succinctly enough to adequately demonstrate their understanding of the material in a
few paragraphs, but this isn’t common, and I recommend you take the approach of explaining the
basic concepts and procedure as though you were explaining them to a friend. This means that you
should discuss WHAT the law in question was, WHAT you expected to see, and HOW you checked
for that result. This does NOT mean that you should explain every nuance of the lab such as what
information was typed into Excel.
 Remember you’re trying to show me that you understand the fundamental concepts, not that you
know what numbers to enter. If you don’t know the meaning of a word or concept, look it up. There
are numerous 2 online references that can help you with definitions, concepts, and writing skills.
Remember, success in any endeavor is partly based upon your ability to communicate your ideas
to other people. While I do not require you to include diagrams of your experimental setup, you are
welcome to if you like. However, they should be follow conventions where appropriate (especially
for any sort of circuit diagram). They should also be (like the writing) your own work, not
something you copied, photocopied, or scanned out of the lab manual.
 DATA AND GRAPHS:

This section is just the printout and/or photocopies of your lab data and results. This is supposed
to be any easy few points, the only way you can get marked off here is if you didn’t come to lab,
or your printout is so difficult to read that I quit trying, or if you results were so far outside the
acceptable error that the results don’t even indicate the basic premise of the experiment. Do not
ever submit original material; in the unlikely event that I lose your lab report, this provides proof
that you actually did conduct the lab. All of the data, axis, etc. should be labeled clearly, with
units as appropriate. A given set of data or graph should NOT hang over multiple pages. You
may have to do some manipulating on the computer to get this to print out correctly. Any graphs
should also have the data taking up most of the space on the graph; you may have to alter the
default maximum and minimum scale values in order to do this.

CALCULATIONS:

In this section, you should include EVERY formula you used in the process of analyzing your data.
In addition, you should include one sample calculation, using YOUR data that you acquired during
the experiment. The purpose of this is to make sure that you understand what the formulas were
and how they were applied (rather than just taking the results from Excel for granted). Additionally,
if you have made a mistake entering your formulas in Excel, you may discover it when you
calculate the answer by hand. This section is just few point. It should be quick and painless.

CONCLUSIONS:

This is the second most important section of the lab report. Here you should restate the basic
premise of the lab, and whether or not your results were in agreement with the theory. For most
labs, I’ll assign a “standard error” value, based on what I expect the standard deviation for the
experiment to be (either by calculating the various experimental uncertainties or based on the
error *I* got, whichever is greater). If your percent error is within the standard deviation, then
your results agree with the theory within the bounds of the experimental uncertainty, and you
merely need to recap the basic premise and your agreement with theory. If you results do not
agree within the standard error, but are within double the standard error, then you must include an
error analysis section where you explain probable sources for error. If you adequately explain
your error, you still receive full credit for the experiment. Please note, however, that your sources
of error must also make sense. I’ll mark off one point from your “DATA” section, but I still
expect to see an explanation. If your explanation is reasonable, you’ll still get full credit on the
CONCULSIONS section.
 Parts of Laboratory reports
1. Cover page
2. Introduction/ theoretical background of the lab
3. Objective of the lab
4. Material required and quantity
5. Procedures
6. Calculation and data analysis
7. Review questions
8. Conclusions