Brief Lab Report Guidelines

General: Lab reports should be written in 11 or 12 point font, double spaced, and in a formal tone. This
means that you cannot use contractions, spoken language expressions, etc. Do not mention your personal
feelings about the experiment. The total length of the main text, including equations and diagrams
embedded in it (but not the title page or additional materials attached at the end), should be 3-5 pages. If it
is a full 6 pages or longer, edit your report to make it more concise. You are responsible for proper
spelling, grammar and clarity of your sentences as well as for the logical progression of the report as a
whole. It is a very good idea to have a classmate proofread your report before you turn it in.

The following sections describe specific parts of the report in more detail.

Title Page: Near the top of the title page give a descriptive title of your report. The title of the
corresponding lab in the manual may or may not be adequate. Below the title, give the names of everyone
in your group, starting with yourself. Below that, italicized, give the name of your institution. Then give
the date on which the experiment was performed, and finally, the TA name (in case your report somehow
ends up in the Lost and Found mailbox). At the bottom of the title page, write your abstract.

Abstract: Summarize your report in a paragraph. Clearly state what you were investigating, outline how
you tested it, what the results were, and whether they agree with your prediction to within instrumental
uncertainty. In a sentence, explain the significance of the concepts that you tested. Your reader needs to
get a general idea of what they will see in the actual text of your report from the abstract. It is a summary
of your report, not an introduction. The abstract goes at the bottom of the title page.

Problem Statement: This section should not be longer than a paragraph. Its sole purpose is to state what
it is that you are investigating and in most general terms what your approach is. Do not include any
experimental details or theoretical calculations. Do not copy the preposterous background stories out of
the manual.

Include a diagram of your setup in this section, and be sure to introduce it in your text. It is advised to
make your diagrams using MS Paint or a similar program. They may be copied out of the manual, but be
advised that those are usually rather poor. If you do copy one, or if you found on online, you absolutely
must include a complete citation of the manual or the website in the caption below that diagram, as well
as in the references section. It is not technically forbidden to use hand-made diagrams, but only those of
highest quality will be accepted without penalty.

Prediction: In this section you will develop your prediction for the experiment based on what you have
learned in the course. Usually, this will mean deriving an equation or set of equations. If you chose to do
so, you can state the situation that you are supposed to be modeling (the preposterous background story),
and comment on how well, in your opinion, the equipment you had models it and explain why.

Do not give every step of the derivation. Focus on the steps that contain physics, not just math. Give each
equation its own line and center it. Comment on how you get from one equation to the next in between
them. Your equations and explanations should be sufficient for someone of about the same level of
preparation as you to be able to reconstruct the whole derivation.
Hand-written equations are not acceptable. Ideally, you should use an equation editor (usually accessible
through the “insert” option).

The end result should be an equation that relates the variable that you are going to measure, to variables
that you either control directly, or that you known from the setup.

Experiment: In this section you need to concisely describe what you did in the course of the experiment.
The description should be continuous and smooth, not a disjoint list of steps. Give enough details for
someone reading the report to be able, in principle, to reconstruct your setup, but no more. Give any
parameters that were constant in all parts of the experiment as part of the description. Give all the
instrumental uncertainties associated with all the measurements and state how you estimated them. The
collected data should be organized into an orderly and readable table, or if the amount of data is large,
presented as a graph. Tables or graphs should also include information on the difference between
predicted and measured quantities, i.e. the error, defined as

𝐸𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑟 ≡ 𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 − 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑑

(Do not include this formula. It is to be considered common knowledge.)

Tables and graphs should not be hand drawn. You need to include a caption with each table or graph,
giving it a number (e.g. Table 1) for easy reference and a brief explanation of what the table or graph is
showing. Introduce or at the very least reference them in the text. If you have material that you attached to
the end of your report (additional graphs, tables, printouts etc.) be sure to direct the reader to them when
appropriate. Note: your lab notes are not something you should directly reference. They are there to make
sure that you actually did what you claim to have done, and that you use good data taking practices. The
report should be self-contained and not mention them.

Columns in tables and axes in graphs should be clearly labeled, including units. For example, if the
horizontal axis of a graph measures distance in centimeters, it should be labeled “Distance (cm)”.

After presenting the data, you should analyze it. Discuss, firstly, the meaning of your data; does it
generally look like what you predicted? Then talk about the agreement or disagreement between your
predicted values and measured values. Do your instrumental uncertainties account for the error in all
cases? If not, consider possible effects that could have resulted in this discrepancy, and if you can,
quantitatively analyze those additional effects to see whether they could really result in the disagreement
that you observed. Use your best judgment to only give physically plausible sources of discrepancy.

Conclusion: Very briefly summarize what you were investigating, what your prediction was, how you
tested it, and with what results. Recap also on the major sources of instrumental uncertainty and on
unaccounted sources of error. Comment on the significance of your results, i.e. what does it imply for the
concepts and principles that you used in making your prediction and for the applicability of your approach
in real life situations.

If your error (as defined above) is greater than your instrumental uncertainty (to be discussed in detail
during the labs), you must not claim that your prediction agreed with your measurements.
Talk about how your experimental procedure could be improved. This does not mean asking for better
equipment, it means is how would you suggest to change the procedure to get better results with the same
equipment, and possibly a little more time. This should be based on the insight that you gained from
performing the experiment yourselves.

Acknowledgements: Give credit to people not in your group who helped you during the experiment or
in the writing of the report. These would normally include (but are not limited to) people from other
groups or outside the section who helped you make sense of your data or gave advice on writing or
proofread your report. If the professor’s lectures or your TA’s discussion of the lab helped your
understanding, you may acknowledge them as well. This section is usually a single sentence, starting with
the words “We would like to thank…” but you can edit that as you see fit.

References: List all texts that you used in writing your report in a proper citation style. This should
always include your textbook, since there is suggested reading given in every lab problem. Be sure to
indicate the specific pages or chapters. If you copied a diagram from the manual, you must cite it. If it
was useful to you in any other way, you should cite it as well. If you used a website, you should give the
complete address and the date on which you visited it.