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Preparing a Laboratory Report. RF Lauff, M.Sc. Part-time Faculty and Senior Laboratory Instructor Biology Department St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS. Overview.
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Preparing a Laboratory Report RF Lauff, M.Sc. Part-time Faculty and Senior Laboratory Instructor Biology Department St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS
Overview A laboratory report should be written as if you were writing a real scientific paper. Therefore, it may be very convenient for you to have a real scientific paper beside you for reference as you write. This tutorial will use the above research paper as an example of a properly formatted work. Bear in mind that formatting styles vary for different journals, and likewise, for different courses.
Title – etc. • brief • phenomenon (phenomena) being described • animal(s) involved • authorship • ID number, course, date Please don’t use a separate page for this!
The Abstract The major technique(s) are briefly mentioned The results are itemized This section starts off with one phrase or sentence describing the goal of the paper The conclusions are drawn Only rarely are citations made here. You likely won’t encounter this. Likewise, statistics are not normally mentioned here.
investigated Major technique Goal Results Concluding Remarks
Introduction Synopsis of known information LOTS of citations! Never refer to the results of your experiment in this section!
Introduction, continued Given all that you’ve just described, tell the reader what your experiment is about!
Methods and Materials categorize! cite equations
categorize! cite
Results Keep categorizing! FIGURES TEXT
Results, continued • almost robotic description of the figures and tables • but NO interpretation • i.e. no physiological explanations • the text should be descriptive enough to provide a mental picture of the graph • i.e. given just the text, the reader should be able to draw a decent representation of the graph
Results, continued Tutorials on graphing and creating a table are available as links from the lab’s webpage: http://www.stfx.ca/people/rlauff/304/304.html. Do NOT rely on software defaults to create effective graphs!
no background colour no line colours no borders font too small
The Discussion • categorize! • this is where you explain the physiology!
Acknowledgements • thank the people who helped you out.
The point of a lab report is to…communicate your research! http://www.stfx.ca/people/rlauff/teaching/write.html