Preparing a Laboratory Report

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Preparing a Laboratory Report

• RF Lauff, M.Sc.
• Part-time Faculty and
• Senior Laboratory Instructor
• Biology Department
• St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS

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Overview

• A laboratory report should be written as if you
  were writing a real scientific paper. Therefore,
  it may be very convenient for you to have a real
  scientific paper beside you for reference as you
  write.
• This tutorial will use the above research paper
  as an example of a properly formatted work. Bear
  in mind that formatting styles vary for different
  journals, and likewise, for different courses.

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Title etc.

• brief
• phenomenon (phenomena) being described
• animal(s) involved
• authorship
• ID number, course, date

Please dont use a separate page for this!
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The Abstract

• This section starts off with one phrase or
  sentence describing the goal of the paper

The major technique(s) are briefly mentioned
The results are itemized
The conclusions are drawn
Only rarely are citations made here. You likely
wont encounter this. Likewise, statistics are
not normally mentioned here.
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investigated
Major technique
Goal
Results
Concluding Remarks
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Introduction
Synopsis of known information
LOTS of citations!
Never refer to the results of your experiment in
this section!
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Introduction, continued
Given all that youve just described, tell the
reader what your experiment is about!
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Methods and Materials
categorize!
cite
equations
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categorize!
cite
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Methods and Materials, continued
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Results
Keep categorizing!
FIGURES
TEXT
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Results, continued

• almost robotic description of the figures and
  tables
• but NO interpretation
• i.e. no physiological explanations
• the text should be descriptive enough to provide
  a mental picture of the graph
• i.e. given just the text, the reader should be
  able to draw a decent representation of the graph

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Results, continued
Tutorials on graphing and creating a table
are available as links from the labs
webpage http//www.stfx.ca/people/rlauff/304/304.
html. Do NOT rely on software defaults to
create effective graphs!
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no background colour no line colours
font too small
no borders
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The Discussion

• categorize!
• this is where you explain the physiology!

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Acknowledgements

• thank the people who helped you out.

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The point of a lab report is tocommunicate your
research!
http//www.stfx.ca/people/rlauff/teaching/write.ht
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