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More About Laboratory Notebooks:
More About Project Summaries:
- Purposes: Learning and Evaluation
- Grading Criteria
- Project Summary Format
- Technical Hints for Good Project Summaries
- Sample Report (annotated)
What You Put in a Lab Notebook
Prelab: You are to write your answers to all Prelab questions and prepare data tables before coming to lab in your lab notebook. Your answers to the Prelab questions are due at the beginning of the lab period.
During Lab: Each student is to keep a complete set of data collected by the team in his/her lab notebook and/or on a 3-1/2 inch floppy disk depending on the type of data collected. At the end of each laboratory period, you are to give your Graduate Instructor a copy of each page of your laboratory notebook on which you recorded data, calculations, observations, etc., during the laboratory period.
Changing any observations or measurements is considered to be cheating and will be dealt with accordingly.
Guidelines For The Laboratory Notebook- The required lab notebook for CHM 115 is the carbonless copy notebook that was packaged with your lab manual.
- Record the title of the project, the date on which it was done, the observations and measurements made while doing the experiment in the notebook.
- All entries are to be written in pen.
- All entries in the laboratory notebook must be legible on the original and the copy.
- Date and sign each page of the laboratory notebook upon completing the work
Lab Project Summaries Preparing a lab project summary involves analysis of your observations and measurements in a way that also reflects your understanding of the procedures, techniques, and chemical systems in relationship to the chemical concepts and principles covered in lecture and the textbook. In a lab project summary, you are expected to link ideas, procedures, and analyses to the theory and problem solving strategies you study in lectures and read in the textbook. It may be necessary to use and apply information from more than one chapter in your textbook to complete a lab project or report. Sample Report
Grading Criteria for Lab Project Summaries
Although the topic for each project summary will be different, the following criteria will be used to evaluate your written work.
- The project summary is complete.
- The project summary is organized correctly.
- The presentation is legible and logical. Heading and subheadings are used to identify or describe the contents of a particular section. Graphs and tables have titles to describe the contents. Sentences are complete.
- The data analysis and calculations, including units of measurement and significant figures, are correct.
- Chemical terms and concepts are used correctly throughout the report.
- Your conclusions are consistent with your data and calculations.
Each project summary will be limited to two pages. You should organize and present your information in a fashion that would be suitable for a poster session at a science fair or for display of your work on a bulletin board. Each project summary must include all the following sections in the order listed:
Objective A one-or-two sentence statement of the objectives, goals, or purposes of the project. In other words, what are you planning to accomplish? This is where you tell the reader what question(s) you are investigating or will answer at the end of the project.
Data This section includes descriptions of observations in addition to numerical measurements. The data must be organized and consistent with any format suggested in the laboratory manual. Data tables are always a good idea. This is where you report all the evidence that you collected to be able to answer the question(s) stated in the Objective. A statement such as "refer to the lab notebook" is NOT sufficient.
Data Analysis Data analysis includes reasoning and formulating conclusions that are based on descriptive or qualitative data as well as numerical computations based on quantitative data. This is where you show how you used the evidence or data you collected to obtain answers to the question(s) presented in the Objective. A statement such as "refer to the lab notebook" is NOT sufficient.
When data analysis involves reasoning with qualitative data, such as identifying the substance in an unknown, you must verbally describe the relationships between your observations and conclusions. When data analysis involves quantitative processes, a sample calculations must be shown for each computation or each step in a series of computations.
When data analysis involves quantitative processes and mathematical computations, you must include a full set of sample computations with numbers and units. If the computation requires a series of computations, you need to show a sample computation for each step. If the project involves repetitive computations, for example, using three trials to determine the molarity of acid in an acid solution, you can summarize the computations in a Data Analysis Summary Table with properly labeled column headings. However, you still must have a full set of sample computations for one of the trials.
Graphs that are part of data analysis must have a title and all axes properly labeled. Graphs can be attached at the end of the report.
Results The results of your work are to be stated or listed briefly in this section. The identity of any unknowns or the final desired result are stated in this section. A phrase such as "refer to Data Analysis" is NOT adequate.
Discussion Answers to any questions posed in the lab manual or given by the faculty.
Some Technical Hints for Good Science Project Reports
- Use descriptive subtitles for sections and subsections.
For example, "Titration of HCl with NaOH" is more informative to the reader than "Part I." - Organize data and/or computations into tables whenever possible. Include proper column and row headings in tables.
- Make graphs large enough to be useful for reading numerical information from the graph. Graphs should occupy most of the area of a 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper The divisions on each axis should match the number of significant figures in the data and each axis should be labeled with the variable and the unit of measurement plotted on that axis. For example, if you are plotting data with 3 significant figures, then you need divisions on an axis so that the first two digits can be determined directly and the third digit can be estimated.