Stem-O-Sphere’s Tips and Tricks for Lab Reports!
Lab reports. Not the kind that involve Golden retrievers in lab coats. Many consider the writing of lab reports to be the worst parts of their courses due to the sheer amount of information that must be included, the rigid format, the VERY FRUSTRATING GRAPH MAKING, and the analysis of confusing results.
Yet, maybe when your professor uttered the words “lab report”, you felt no sense of dread rising inside you. Or maybe you are so lost that you don’t know how you will survive this class assignment and have started to panic. Or maybe you aren’t losing all your marbles, but you are also not anticipating getting much sleep the night before the due date. Whatever your situation, it is still beneficial for you to read this anyways.
Lab reports follow a basic format. Rest assured, no matter the amount of effort applied at least one point for writing down your name, date, course name and number, and your instructor’s name. 😊 But let’s try to aim higher! So here are some tips and tricks to writing a lab report, from the mind of a fellow surviving science student.
This may be the single most important way to get ahead of the game. Lab reports will take longer than you will expect, so start as early as possible. Keep reading to find out what else you can do.
The widely accepted way to tackle a lab report is:
Materials and methods --> Results --> Introduction --> Discussion/conclusion.
In other words, here is the way you would be approaching this: you write what you did, what you got, what was your research question, and how do your results answer your research question. However, there is any other order that works better for you, then go for it! Creativity and originality are also valued in science writing, so experiment with different styles.
When captioning your figures or graphs, mention where they are on the page. Also, make sure that your captions are distinguishable from your writing.
Divide your Materials and Methods section by making each paragraph represent a different experiment or task. It will look like this:
“Collection and examination: To begin my experiment and collect an isolated colony, I chose an environmental location to swab and collect a sample of the bacteria present in this site. The location chosen was…”
PCR amplification: Using the 16S rDNA primers, only the section containing that gene is multiplied. To carry out a PCR, two PCR tubes…”
Your graphics should be legible when printed, however, they should not take up pages and pages of your report! If your report could have been 12 pages with decently sized images but you made the images big enough that it is now 20 pages, your instructors will most likely not be pleased with you.
Here are some zinger words to use when you’re writing! My personal favorites include aliquot, predominate, and utilize.
Play some jams! It helps time go by quickly. But make sure to pick something that isn’t too catchy that it distracts from your writing. One time I started typing the words to “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran without realizing it in my Results section! Three-hour music videos like this save lives!!!
If you need to find a place on the UI campus that does color printing, here is a link!
9. Conciseness is a valuable quality in a paper, so watch your page count!
Besides from these tips, I give you a final trick: be confident in your writing. Do not falter from stating your interpretations, since the main purpose of writing a report is to show how you carried out the scientific process. Regardless of whether you are supposedly “right” or “wrong” in your results, your grade is determined by how you able to think through what you did and why did things turned out the way they did.
To conclude, I will leave you with the words of Edward O. Wilson:
“...successful research doesn't depend on mathematical skill, or even the deep understanding of theory. It depends to a large degree on choosing an important problem and finding a way to solve it, even if imperfectly at first. Very often ambition and entrepreneurial drive, in combination, beat brilliance.”
Good luck with your writing! And remember that science is for everyone! Ask us if you have any other questions using the Ask button at the top of our Tumblr page ;D
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-Written by Camille Jaime-
