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A comprehensive guide on how to write a lab report, an essential skill for scientists to communicate their research findings to a limited audience, primarily instructors and classmates. The lab report format is similar to a scientific paper, including sections for the title, authors, abstract, theory and significant equations, error analysis, experimental setup and procedures, data and data analysis, and conclusions. The document also recommends using latex for report preparation and igor pro for data analysis.
Typology: Lab Reports
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One may think that the work of a scientist is done after the experiment is completed, and its results are analyzed. This is not true! Any research finding have to be communicated to the scientific community and make its contribution to the common knowledge “database”. Therefor, learning how to communicate the results of your experiments to others is a very important skill. In science the most common way to inform the world about your work is to write a paper in a scien- tific journal. A good paper introduce the readers the original research goal and its significance, describes the experimental methods used, presents the results and analyze how they fit into the known physical pic- ture, and draw conclusions. All important information must be included in the paper: ideally, any person knowledgeable in the field should be able reproduce the experiment and obtain similar results. A lab report serves similar purpose, but for more limited audience (you course instructors and possible your classmates). It is important that you learn how to communicate your findings. In you report you have to clearly and concisely communicate the purpose, the methods and the results of your experiments. The format for a lab report you need to follow is similar to a scientific paper in a journal. Your lab report must include the following parts.
This sectioning is only approximate. Sections can be merged, dropped or broken into subsection depend- ing on the particular experiment, as long as all the points mentioned above are addressed. You should turn in a hard copy of your lab report, but you are strongly encouraged to prepare your report electronically. While journal publisher expand the range of acceptable formats for paper submissions, most physicists (and other scientists who type a lot of equations) prefer LaTeX. A report template in Latex is available on the course web-site. Warning: your first couple experiences with LaTeX may not be very satisfactory - in fact, you may be very frustrated! But once you get familiar with the system, you will find it quite pleasant to work with. Also, try to find an editor you are comfortable with - for example, WinEdt(http://www.winedt.com/) is very easy to use. This is a shareware program and comes with 30 day free trial. Similarly, all the graphs should be done electronically. The default data analysis software for this course is Igor Pro from Wavemetrics. Additional instructions will be available from the instructor. However, if you would like to use a different software (Matlab, for example, or xmgrace for Linux), you can do so after you receive instructor’s permission. Before you ask, however, make sure that this software can:
Please don’t forged: while you are encouraged to do the experimental preparation, the data taking and the data analysis as a team, the lab report is an individual task. Copying any part of someone else’s report is considered plagiarism. This also violates the Honor code, and will be reported to the Honor council.
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