Instrumental Chemistry for Engineers Laboratory Instruction Manual

UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA

LABORATORY INSTRUCTION
MANUAL

Faculty of Chemical Engineering

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Instrumental Chemistry for Engineers Laboratory Instruction Manual

Contents

What is expected of you 3

What you need to include in your lab report 3

How to write: an abstract 4

an introduction 4

an experimental procedure 5

the results and discussion sections 5

the conclusion and references sections 5

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Instrumental Chemistry for Engineers Laboratory Instruction Manual

WHAT IS EXPECTED OF YOU

It is compulsory that you both attend the laboratory practical sessions as well as submit a
complete lab report. Attendances will be taken during the lab sessions and therefore it will be
obvious should you miss lab; please do not try to submit a report unless you have talked to
your lab instructor or Dr Mikhail, otherwise you will receive no marks.

WHAT YOU NEED TO INCLUDE IN YOUR LAB REPORT

You are expected to include the following areas in all your lab reports:

Cover sheet
Experimental Protocol
Results
Discussion
Conclusions
References

Failure to include any of these areas will result in the loss of marks at the discretion of the lab
instructor.

Marks will be distributed in the following manner:

Experimental Protocol - 10 marks

Results - 15 marks
Discussion - 15 marks
Conclusions - 5 marks
References - 5 marks

There is now a section which depends upon how active and involved you are in the
completion of your laboratory work. During the course of your lab experiments you will be
assessed on your skills, effort and active participation. The maximum mark that can be
awarded is 10; students who fail to get involved and are lazy will get low marks.

The following sections offer some guidance on how to complete your lab reports appropriately
and hopefully achieve the highest marks; this information has been provided for your benefit,
therefore please use it.

HOW TO WRITE AN ABSTRACT

The purpose of an abstract is to summarise an experiment or piece of research you have

performed in a few lines. You should inform the reader as to the aim of the experiment and
the corresponding results.

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Instrumental Chemistry for Engineers Laboratory Instruction Manual

Example

“This experiment is to determine the heat capacity of calorimeter, heat of neutralisation HCl-
NaOH and HC2H3O2-NaOH. The heat capacity of calorimeter is 3.17 J/K, heat of
neutralisation HCl-NaOH is 50.54 kJ/mol and HC2H3O2-NaOH is 55.6 kJ/mol.”

This is a really good abstract since it is condensed (short and simple). It tells me, the reader,
everything I need to know about the experiment they performed: it worked, since we have
some results and further to this I can compare these results straightaway to those in the
literature or I at least have access to.

My version

The following report presents the results determined for the enthalpy of neutralisation of a
base; sodium hydroxide (NaOH) using two different acids; hydrochloric acid (HCl) and
ethanoic acid (CH3CO2H). In order to determine the enthalpy of neutralisation a simple
calorimeter, which was calibrated with respect to its heat capacity, determined to be 65 J/K,
was used. The enthalpies of neutralisation for NaOH-HCl and NaOH-CH3CO2H were
determined to be 65.1 kJ/mol and 69.6 kJ/mol, respectively.

So from this abstract I know the purpose of the experiment, what reactants were used and
any results corresponding to the progress of the neutralisation – calibration and enthalpies
values.

N.B. Sometimes it is easier to write the abstract after you have written the other parts of the
report, since you may find it easier to pinpoint the most important parts of the experiment and
therefore incorporate them into two or three simple and condensed sentences.

On an aesthetic note:

Try formatting your reports; using the justified setting – this will give you a more attractive and
pleasing-to-the-eye report. It is also slightly easier to read due to the way the words are
better spaced to fill the line they are on.

HOW TO WRITE AN INTRODUCTION (INCLUDING THEORY)

Since this course focuses on the use of analytical equipment in order to identify compounds
and functionality, for example, your introduction should explain what the analytical technique
being employed is. Include a brief history of the technique, what theory or theories does it rely
on in order to elucidate information about the compounds being analysed, include a labelled
diagram and explain how the machine works, and finally explain the objective of the
experiment (you can use the information provided in the experimental brief).

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Instrumental Chemistry for Engineers Laboratory Instruction Manual

HOW TO WRITE AN EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE

Your experimental protocol should explain how you prepare your samples for analysis as well
as what equipment is required to do so. The procedure itself should be written in a stepwise
manner and numbered consecutively so that you can follow it when you perform your
experiment. In the final write up of your lab report it is preferable that you write in the third
person i.e. you don’t use personal pronouns such as I, you and we, instead use no personal
terminology:

I poured the solution into the beaker becomes Pour the solution into the beaker

HOW TO WRITE THE RESULTS AND DISCUSSION SECTIONS

In your write ups there are 15 marks for your results and discussion (and calculations), this
constitutes 33% of your lab marks. It is very important that you get some results, the more
accurate they are to the known solutions the better, but even if your results are not that good,
a good explanation why you had “weird” results can get you very good marks. Simply present
your results in a manner which makes them easy to understand by both you and the person
assessing your work; so remember clear, concise and comprehendible.

Consider an experiment in which you repeated an experiment three times to calculate

confidence intervals, but your data seems very random - there could be many reasons for
this; perhaps the temperature probe you used was faulty, there was a small orange elephant
in the lab, which disturbed you while you measuring the solution volume. There are many
factors in a lab environment, which can contribute to abnormal or unexpected results; think of
plausible (believable) reasons why things went wrong - referring to the existence of a small
orange elephant is not believable, unfortunately!

If you are in any doubt as to how to further write this section, again, discuss with your lab
instructor or Dr Mikhail.

HOW TO WRITE THE CONCLUSION AND REFERENCES SECTIONS

Conclusions is another vital part of a lab write up; in this section you need to summarise the
results of the experiment; was it a success and what do the results you obtained mean?

Consider the following experiment: Heat of dissolution, the purpose of this experiment was to
determine the energy change when table salt was dissolved in water. So the conclusion
would go something like this:

This experiment was performed in order to determine the heat of dissolution for salt in water.
The value determined was 25kJ mol-1, which corresponds to an exothermic reaction. This is
in good agreement with information found in the literature; however the value is slightly below
those reported. This could be caused by inaccurate laboratory equipment and other reasons
referred to in the discussions section. The cause of this exothermic reaction is the formation
of bonds between sodium, chloride and water molecules, this is also known as the solvation

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effect. Besides the inaccuracy of the results this experiment has been a success since the
aims of the experiment were achieved and I have gained knowledge regarding the solvation
effect.

Note the reference to the literature; you can only say this if you have an actual value taken
from the literature to compare it to and you reference it somewhere within your lab report. Do
not just copy and paste what I have written here unless you can support your actions with
your won references. If you have not made any references to other literature then you are not
required to state any and you will not lose marks. Remember anything you reference for
information should be included in this section e.g. a website from which you acquired a
labelled diagram should be referred to in the appropriate section as well as referenced
properly in the reference section

References may or may not be required in your write up, but should you use any please use
the Harvard system in order to reference correctly. Please refer to the following website:
www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/using/harvard_system.html