Formal Lab Report Guide

Scientific writing is just as important as a scientific investigation or experiment. Writing a lab report allows scientists to share research with the scientific community.

A lab report is commonly broken down into different sections with a heading.

Title

The title of a laboratory report is a short, informative statement explaining what the laboratory report is about.

Purpose

This is a short statement or paragraph explaining the reason/rationale for conducting the experiment.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is an educated guess that predicts the result of the experiment you will be conducting. It is written in the form of a prediction. A hypothesis is not always present. In this course, not all labs include a hypothesis because some lab activities are pre-designed to allow you to explore new lab techniques and procedures.

Materials

This is a list of all materials used in the experiment. Diagrams, sketches, and/or pictures can also be used in this section to show how the experiment was set up.

For example: Erlenmeyer flasks, pipettes, and burettes

Procedure

The procedure is an ordered list of steps clearly describing how the experiment was done. The list of steps are written in the past tense and can be written in the third person. Some experiments will give you a procedure to perform the lab. The goal of this section in a formal lab report is to write your steps taken in your own words.

Results

This section tells the reader what the experimenter observed before, during, and after the experiment. It is usually organized into sections, including diagrams and tables. The results may be in quantitative form (involving numbers) or qualitative form (not involving numbers). All quantitative information recorded must include units of measurement, such as grams (g), metres (m), or degrees Celsius (°C).

Analysis

This section includes the answers to any discussion or analysis questions posed in the lab. This is also where you would discuss sources of error. Be sure to include a brief discussion about how the sources of error would affect your lab results.

Conclusion

The conclusion section is related to the original purpose and hypothesis. Do the results of your experiment support your hypothesis? If so, it is important to state this. If they do not, you could pose some questions based on your results that could guide a follow-up experiment.

A conclusion should also suggest some sources of error, even if your experiment worked well. If another individual conducts your experiment, they can take note of your sources of error and ensure that they design it so that they can take these into account.

References

In this section you want to include any external sources you may have used to write your lab-report. Each source needs to be appropriately referenced according to the most up-to-date referencing style guide.