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Lab Report Guidelines

Formatting:

- 12 point font, 1 inch margins, Times New Roman font, and stay within page limits.

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Label each section of the paper, such as Introduction, Materials and Methods, etc.- 3

rdperson only!

o Do not use we, I, our

- Past tense only

o This statement is not appropriate for your report:Pipette 50 uL of liquid A into

tube A.

Instead, say 50 ul of liquid A was transferred to tube A.

- Avoid awkward vocabulary such as experimenters, or student researchers

o Instead of saying the experimenter gathered 5 barley leaves, say 5 barley

leaves were gathered.

Introduction:

- Think of the big picture as you begin writing your introduction. Ask yourself these

questions:

o Whats the overall goal of this laboratory?

o What have past studies shown about this specific field? How can I tie in these

past studies into what it is being accomplished in my experiment?

o What is the null hypothesis and alternative/experimental hypothesis?

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Remember that your intro should be structured like a funnel. Start off big and then getmore specific.

- You should have references in the introduction and you should cite them properly.

Include the references in a Works Cited page at the end of your report (that wont count

towards the overall page count).

o How does this paper fit in with the study that you are conducting? What

information did they provide that you can elaborate on?

Materials and Methods

-

Write this section first. Use your manual to help you write it out.- This section should resemble the protocol from your manual but do NOT copy it word

for word. If this section is much longer than it should be, then you may be docked

points.

- Think about each step that you conducted. Think about how important it is to include.

Ask yourself, if I leave this detail out, will it affect someones ability to replicate the

experiment?

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o Example:

Do NOT include that you put gloves on before an experiment, or that you

used a p1000 pipette.

Do include things like volumes of reagents, ratios of reagents, what kinds

of tests are being used to analyze your results.

Results

- Reference all of your figuresand elaborate on the results they provide.

- Keep it simple and concise. Do NOT discussyour results here.

- In your figures, you can elaborate on what the results mean since they have to be able

to stand alone.

- Do not try to take up space by including a figure from a separate paper unless it

ACTUALLY fits in with our experiment.

Discussion

- This is where you elaborate on your results. Think about these questions:

o What do my results signify?

o Do my results support or reject the hypothesis?

o Do past studies support or refute the results I got?

It may help to find a piece of literature that agrees with your results and

see what they had to say. Try making a connection between the two

studies.

-

Provide a thoughtful conclusion that shows me you actually thought about what yourdata means. If your data isnt the best, how can you improve it? Instead of simply listing

10 ways to improve the experiment, think about 2 or 3 ways and go into some detail

about why you think those improvements will help. This goes hand in hand with the

sources of error.

- Lastly, include a short paragraph about significance/implications/future directions.

Briefly discuss what practical future studies can be done to shed more light onto this

field.

Figures and Tables:

-

See the examples below of how to properly label a figure and a table, and what to include in a

caption for each.

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Notice that the FIGURE caption is BELOW the figure.

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The TABLE caption is ABOVE the table.

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Include a brief description of what the figure/table presents in order to help guide your reader.

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