Use for:

  • Physical Science
  • Conceptual Physics

Resources

Lab Report Outline

Title: Give your lab a title! You can use the experiment number and give it a name.

Purpose/Abstract: Answer the question as to what the purpose of the experiment is, always includes three key items:

  1. The what is being studied
  2. The specific materials being used
  3. The instruments, type of data, and method of analysis performed to determine the experimental results

Data:
Key data must be put in a table. Usually the data you will be interested in is key final numbers that will be used in your final calculations. You need not list every piece of labeled/recorded data here, only the important values that will be used in your results and the discussion/conclusion.

Results:
This section is simply a short written section of the key numbers obtained in the experiment. List only the key data from your table above. Sentences as “The energy for trial#1 of the experiment was 50kJ” are very common in this section.

Conclusion/Discussion:
This is the critical part of the report; it is the place where you get to make some conclusions about your data. What where the key factors/variables studied in the experiment? Did the experiment work? Why or Why Not? Be sure to explain what criteria you are using to gauge this. What does the experimental data tell you about your results? Do the results follow and trend you expected to see or was there a problem? Explain. You should be able to state a conclusion about the results and give some explanation to support the results you got.

This is also the place you get to provide some discussion as to what happened concerning the chemistry behind the experiment (this will usually be necessary, unless the lab has no chemical reaction). Also any questions asked in the lab packet should be addressed with some comments in this section. Error analysis and a short comment of any sources of uncertainty should be discussed here as well.

  1. Discussion of the basic experimental method and the key experimental variables
  2. Discussion of experimental success and how it was determined
  3. Conclusions about your experiment based on your data and the experiment questions
  4. Effects any uncertainty may have on your data and calculated values

Appendix:
This contains all other data/information necessary for report. Graphs are always placed here. This is also the place to put any calculations that need to be shown (If I assign them only).