Writing Lab Reports for BIO 1654
Page 3
- Results
- You should report your results in this section. This must
include a brief narrative with reference to any figures
(which should be numbered as Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.) or
tables (also numbered - Table 1). You should only report
the results that you obtained, not what should of
happened. In addition, this is not the place where to
describe the significance of the results.
One of the more common mistakes of students is the
inclusion of every piece of data into the results
section. You should only include analyzed data and only
the data that is relevant to the experimental question
being probed. For example, in your first lab, you will be
recording (in your lab notebook) the weight of volumes
pipetted by different pipettes. For each volume, you will
perform the measurement 3 times and then perform
statistics (such as mean and standard deviation) on these
data. In your lab report, you do not need to list each
value measured, reporting the mean, the standard
deviation and the number of measurements is sufficient.
Likewise, in some experiments, you will prepare figures
of graphs of your data. You do not need to include both a
table of values and a graph of the same values, the graph
is adequate. It is not necessary to report the same data
in two different forms such as a table and a graph. You
must decide which form best presents the data to the
reader.
- Discussion
- This is the section in which you describe the meaning and
significance of your results. In this section, you should
explain and interpret your results. You should relate the
results to the experimental objectives described in the
Introduction. You should also include any difficulties or
problems that you experienced with the results and what
might you change if you were to repeat the experiment as
to avoid these problems. In this section, you should
compare your results with the expected results and
explain any inconstancies if possible. This section
allows you to demonstrate that you understand the
experiment and are not just simply following a set of
instructions.
- References
- Include references to all citations in your report. In
scientific writing, there are no footnotes. Anytime you
use informaion from a source (such as a textbook), that
source must be cited in the text of the report. Any cited
source (and only cited sources) need to be included in
the reference section. For example, suppose in the
Introduction you state that the amount of adenine is
always equal to the amount of thymine in human DNA. This
is not common knowledge, and infact, you found this piece
of information in a text book. When you make this
statement, you must indicate that you found it in some
source (thus you cite the source). This is commonly done
(although there are variations) by including a number (1
for the first citation, 2 for the second, etc) next to
the sentence where you give the information. The number
can either be in parentheses or as a superscript. The
following is an example:
The amount of adenine is always equal to the amount of
thymine in human DNA (2).
- The (2) is the citation that indicates that this
information is not original. In the References section,
you should include source of the information, numbered
with a 2.
2. Campbell, N. (1996). Biology, 4th edition,
Benjamn Cummings Publishing Co., pp. 283-285.
- Now the reader can find the source of your information.
-
Other sources: These pages are a
brief introduction to the world of scientific writing. For more
information, please see the following:
Web pages for Scientific Writing
Books found in the ACC LRS (there are
other books as well)
Katz, M. (1985). Elements of the
Scientific Paper, Yale University Press
Alley, M. (1987) The Craft of
Scientific Writing, Prentice-Hall, Inc.
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