The Plight of the Oysters in Chesapeake Bay Estuary

General Lab Report Guidelines
The various scientific journals use a variety of different formats for reporting research findings, but the one described here is the most common. . By following these guidelines, you are more likely to understand the purpose and conclusions of the lab demonstrations, as well as write up a report that is both clear and concise. The basic criterion you should be using as to whether or not your lab report is adequate, is the following: Does the lab report allow a reader who was not present during the actual lab to understand what you were doing, the results you obtained, how you obtained the results, and what the results may potentially mean? If the answer to that question is no, then the report is not clear enough. Also, keep several other points in mind:
• Don"t confuse clarity with lengthiness. A short, concise, clear description is worth more than a detailed one that takes three pages.
• Don"t confuse the results you obtained with the expected results. The purpose of the lab is for you to run the experiment and to state the results you actually achieved, not the results you think someone else (the instructor, TA, lab partner) wants you to get.
• Don"t confuse accuracy with laziness. Although "we couldn"t figure out what happened" is more desirable than a made-up answer of what you think you were supposed to get, it does not show a lot of initiative. Before you give up on understanding your data, discuss it with the TA, instructor, or other classmates. Think about possibilities before you shrug your shoulders. Your abilities and ideas are greater than you think.
Format for Lab Reports
You should divide your report into four sections, which follow one another in logical sequence. First, the subject is introduced and a question (hypothesis) is posed. Then the methods are described by which the question was addressed. Next, the results of the experimentation are presented and described, and finally, conclusions are drawn appropriate to the results obtained. In addition, of course, every report needs a title, which should be short, informative and indicative of the scope of the paper.
1. The Introduction (poses the question)
The introduction to your report should contain a concise statement of the background information necessary to understand the experiment and the results. It usually asks a question, at least indirectly, and tells why the question is being asked. In other words you should describe your observations (or those of your group) that led you to the question being asked. These observations may be casual, personal observations, or they may be the result of some reading that you have done. You need to explicitly state your hypothesis, which is merely an educated guess about a relationship between two factors. Further, you need to state the expected outcome of your experiment. (If the relationship described in your hypothesis holds true, what sort of results do you expect to get?) Please note that the hypothesis and predictions are not one and the same.
2. Methods (describes how you attempted to answer the question)
In this section you will want to describe briefly, yet thoroughly, the experimental procedure used
in the lab. There is no need to reiterate what is already stated in the protocol. Often it is adequate simply to say, "the experiment was performed as outlined in the lab handout, pp.--." However, at least a brief description of the methods you used is required, and it is absolutely essential that you mention all the ways in which the lab, as actually performed, deviated from that described in the lab handout. If there is no written protocol, you need to thoroughly describe every step that your group took during the experiment. It is not necessary to provide a “shopping list” of all of the equipment and supplies used during your experiment. Quantifying conditions is important though – make sure you provide enough detail when describing conditions: What was the room temperature? How many solutions did you make? What concentrations were they? How much did you make? How did you measure the water? I should be able to repeat exactly the experiment that your group performed.
3. Results (presents your findings; can use data, charts, tables, graphs, drawings, etc.)
This section should focus on the actual results obtained, and not their explanation (which should be outlined in the following section). Outline the data you obtained. Often it is useful to put the information in terms of a graph or chart to better summarize the information. In some cases drawings or figures might be necessary. If you are drawing a figure or constructing a graph, it should be clear enough to allow a stranger to know what you saw. Graphs should be computer generated; do not attempt to make your graph using hand-drawn lines on notebook or typing paper. Make sure that you clearly explain what data you are presenting, and what portion of the experiment it is from. All graphs should have a meaningful title and clearly labeled axes, including units. Also, it is not enough to insert a graph of data, without any written description of the data that it presents. You need to state something like: “The data from this experiment are shown in the attached graph. This graph shows the amount of water absorbed for each of the 3 types of paper towels used. Paper towel A absorbed the most water (20ml), whereas Paper Towels B and C each absorbed 10 ml.” Some of the labs will have data collection charts that are designed to help you collect the data in a way that will be meaningful. These charts are there to help you, but if you feel more comfortable, you can collect data on your own sheets of paper. In either case, these are for your own rough data collection of data, and are not to be used as the actual charts you hand in as part of the lab report.
4. Discussion/ Conclusions (discusses meaning and interpretation of results)
The Discussion/Conclusions section is the place for you to tell me what you’ve learned. Describe the major outcomes of the lab experiments (reiterate your data) and compare those results with what you expected before the laboratory. Do they support your hypothesis or cause you to reject it? Try to interpret the data in terms of why the results ended up as they did, what factors might have led to a difference between the observed and expected results, and which parts of the lab might be too ambiguous to interpret. Describe any problems or errors that may have occurred during the experiment. How would you revise the experiment if you were to do it again? Explain what further experiments or tests you might perform if you wanted to answer any new or remaining questions.
It is important to remember that the purpose of these lab reports is to help students realize what is required to think about the experiments "scientifically". That is, while you are doing the experiments you should realize that it is more important to try and understand why you are doing something, than to simply follow the protocols and record the outcomes. Make sure that you understand why each step was performed in a particular way. As with all scientific endeavors, it is more important to think than to blindly perform.