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2.2: Sections of the Report

  • Page ID
    34681
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    Your lab report should be divided into distinct sections. There is no standard set or sequence of sections. Here is a typical and acceptable outline:

    1. Introduction—A description of the goals of the experiment. Do not lift the text from the lab manual; use your own words. The introduction need not be long; in many cases, one or two paragraphs is enough.

    2. Methods—Descriptions of the experimental set-up and procedures. When writing about the set-up, do not follow the lab manual in listing out individual pieces of equipment and assembly instructions; that’s not relevant information in a lab report! Instead, describe the apparatus as a whole (preferably with a diagram), and explain how it works.

      Likewise, when describing the experimental procedure, do not simply lift instructions from the lab manual. Your description should take the form of a narrative, and include information not present in the manual, such as descriptions of what happened during intermediate steps of the experiment.

    3. Results—This section should contain both complete paragraphs of text and figures/tables. The text paragraphs should be written in such a way that it is possible to understand what’s going on by just reading through them, without looking at the figures. Every figure/table must be referenced and discussed somewhere in the text (e.g., “The dependence of the sample temperature on applied voltage is plotted in Fig. 3. From the data, we observe an approximately linear relationship. A linear least squares fit shows that...”).

      The report should contain all necessary details about how the data were analyzed, including error analysis (i.e., derivations for the uncertainty estimates). If an analysis is too long, relegate it to an appendix.

    4. Conclusions—Summary of what was learnt from the experiment. If the results seem unexpected or unreliable, discuss them and give possible explanations. This section need not be long; one or two paragraphs is OK.

    5. Appendix A, Appendix B, etc.—You can use appendices for detailed derivations, tables of raw data, etc., to avoid cluttering up the main text.

    6. References—If you referred to any other works in the text of the report, list them here. References should be numbered, and appear in the same order they are mentioned in the text. The text should cite references by number.

    You don’t need to stick religiously to this outline. For example, in some cases, instead of Methods and Results sections, it might be better to divide the experiment into several conceptually distinct parts, and describe the methods and results for each part within a single section.

    Some lab manuals provide an explicit list of issues/questions to be addressed in your report. Do not create a Question-and-Answer section for this. Instead, deal with these issues at appropriate places in your report; it is up to you to decide where. For example, if there is a question about safety hazards and how to mitigate them, it might be appropriate to have one or two paragraphs discussing this in the Methods section, during your description of experimental procedures.


    This page titled 2.2: Sections of the Report is shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Y. D. Chong via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.