About similar terms in wrting a labreport....

[albertlee]

I am quite confused about the purpose of each of those 3 parts of a lab report:

 

conclusion, evaluation, and discussion....

 

These 3 particular parts of a lab report generally mean the same to me, so I am struggling when my teacher asks me to write each of them individually in my labreport....

 

 

Any help?

 

Albert

[albertlee]

And secondly, what order do we have to write each of them in a labreport?

[albertlee]

Any body can help me....?

[Ophiolite]

Those are somewhat different from the way we sub-divided our reports. I'm casting my mind back forty years here, so forgive any inaccuracies.

 

We would have had:

 

Experiment Name

Purpose of Experiment

Experimental Apparatus

Results

Conclusion

 

I am trying to relate your three sections to these. Let's start with the conclusion.

Briefly, what was the end result of your experiment? What did you discover, or confirm? e.g. We found that when plants were deprived of sunlight, by being placed in a light tight closet, but otherwise provided with air, water and nutrients, they turned yellow and died after a couple of weeks.

The discussion and evaluation are less distinct, and I suspect that a very specific meaning has grown up for these. I recommend you ask your teacher to clarify the difference between them, but in the mean time:

Evaluation is where you assess the data you collected during the experiment. Did the experiment go to plan? Are the data good, reliable data? What do they tell us? How certain or uncertain is this?

Discussion, would then fall either before or after this evaluation. If it is before it would include the purpose/apparatus of the experiment from my list at the start. If it is placed after it should look at what this data means in the larger shceme of things, or how the uncertainties in the conclusions might be addressed.

 

Earlier I said 'let's start with the conclusion'. This is actually a good rule when preparing reports. A report is not a mystery novel. You do not need to keep the reader guessing till he gets to the end. In the real world people do not read reports! They scan them, they dip into them.

I produce several reports in my work, ranging from four or five pages long to fifty or more. I fully expect that only the first page will be read by the people who matter. So the first page is an Executive Summary and it has everything important I want the reader to know. In scientific reports this would be called the Abstract and would likely be nore more than one or two paragraphs long. Before you put this into practice make sure that putting the conclusion at the beginning is acceptable in your school system.

 

Hope that is of some help.

[albertlee]

Ophiolite, thx..

 

By the way, back to forty years ago?????

 

do you mean "forteen years ago"?

[Ophiolite]

Ophiolite' date=' thx..

 

By the way, back to forty years ago?????

 

do you mean "forteen years ago"?[/quote']I wish it was only fourteen, but I'm afraid not. I'm an old fart!

[albertlee]

...................

 

but any way, you speak just as young as any body else here....

 

Cool, I wish my grandparents can speak to me like this