THIRD YEAR LABORATORY

SCIENTIFIC REPORT WRITING

GUIDELINES

GENERAL POINTS

Report writing is an indispensable part of scientific work since it allows others, e.g. your peers, supervisors or future generations of scientists, to understand and assess your achievements. It is an exercise in scientific communication and hence proceeds according to certain rules, some of which are given below.

Reports at third year level should be written in the format accepted by scientific and technical journals e.g. 'The Physical Review'. Two examples of scientific papers are presented in the display case, just inside the entrance to Room 101, and you are urged to consult these.

Your report should be aimed at the level of an average third year physics student so that, after reading the report, they would be able to understand what you did, the physics that's involved and how good your results are. The report should be well organised and thoughtfully written with clear diagrams and graphs. You should be as concise as possible; do not give unnecessary details (e.g. tables of results, calculations) or long winded descriptions or waste time and space copying out experimental notes etc. Concentrate on essentials, show that you understand what you are doing and can pick out the significant features. Spend your time on thinking and planning, do not spend hours typing and word processing - beautiful presentation will not make up for obvious weaknesses in understanding and lack of content!

The report should be typed using a word processor and be submitted in a separate folder with your name and the title of the experiment on the front cover.

ORGANISATION

The material should be organised into sections (not all sections will be applicable to every report) such as the following:

This is a very concise (< 150 words) statement of the experiment and your most significant conclusions. Be sure to include your final results and associated errors.

By reading the abstract, another person should be able to determine whether the contents of the report are of any interest or use to them.

This section should give an overview of the experiment and the physics involved in it. Relate the experiment to the wider context of other work on similar topics and explain what knowledge can be gained from doing the particular experiment.

Here you should present the theoretical relationships necessary to understand and analyse the experimental results, together with a discussion, in your own words, of what they mean. Say where the relationships come from (cite references?) and what special conditions/ assumptions they work under, but don't present lengthy derivations (these may go in an Appendix if necessary). Be sure to explain the meaning of all symbols used in quoted formulae.

Describe the equipment, its function and the experimental measurement techniques you used. Make use of your own block diagrams and neat line drawings, with the various components clearly identified, to illustrate your descriptions. Each diagram should be given a title and a figure number which is then referred to in the text of the report.

Do not inundate the reader with details of each experimental step or reproduce the experimental notes. Be sure, however, to describe any methods you used which differ from the standard procedure.

This section forms the core of your report.

You should clearly state the procedures used to analyse the raw data, but the arithmetical details of the analysis should not be included. Compare your results with the predictions of the relevant theoretical models and, where possible, with those of other workers. Try to explain any discrepancies between your results and what is expected. Discuss the sources of error in your experiment and any other shortcomings in the apparatus or techniques.

When estimating the error in a final result, only the method of error calculation should be explained, details of the error calculation may be given in an appendix.

Results and theoretical predictions should, wherever possible, be presented in graphical form (a table of results is then unnecessary). Graphs should have their axes clearly labelled with units and dimensions correctly shown and with errors represented by error bars (or rectangles). Each graph should have a title and a figure number, for reference within the text. If a comparison of non-graphical results is necessary, the results should be presented in tabular form.

Here you summarise the physical insights gained from the experiment. State clearly your final results, their reliability and any scientific conclusions you can draw from the results. Try to suggest ways to minimise the dominant errors, improve the apparatus, methods etc.

Give a list of the references you have used, in the standard format accepted by scientific journals (see sample papers).

Here you may include derivations of formulae, extra results, sample calculations of results, errors etc., if you feel these are necessary to make a point.

Scientific Report Assessment Sheet
Section	Very good	Good	Satis- factory	Poor	Comments
Abstract
Introduction
Theory
Experimental procedure
Diagrams
Graphs
Results
Error estimate
Discussion and/or conclusion
Other

General remarks:

Student's name:

Mark awarded: /10

Marker's name:

Signature:

Date:

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Further Information

Contact:

• Patrick McMILLAN p.mcmillan@unsw.edu.au