Experiment Journals

[Xittenn]

I am just completing an entry for a lab experiment for my physics class and I'm just wondering if anyone can link some good examples of a professional lab report? I know design documents, when I was in game design, were an important topic and we were given some very interesting links to examples. So I'm just wondering if the same exists for physics lab reports.

 

Thanks!

[mooeypoo]

To be honest, your professor should give you that information. Lab reports have a general structure to them, but many schools have their own slightly different versions. I suggest you contact your professor and ask, just to see that you're doing what he expects.

 

That said, here's a few guidelines I found from a couple of schools about physics lab reports:

 

• http://www.nku.edu/~nutters/lab_writeup.html
• http://modeling.asu.edu/Modeling-pub/Mechanics_curriculum/%20Intro%20stuff/5-lab%20report%20format.pdf
• http://phys.columbia.edu/~preceptor/student/1493_1494_example_lab.pdf

 

As you can see, they're mostly the same with slight exceptions depending on what each professor/class is looking for, and sometimes depend on specific subject. Uncertainty and Error, for instance, is something that you probably should include, but some professors don't ask for it because of lab conditions (or which experiment/demo they used).

 

Hope this helps, but I really think you should ask your professor directly for guidance.

 

~mooey

[Xittenn]

To be honest, your professor should give you that information. Lab reports have a general structure to them, but many schools have their own slightly different versions. I suggest you contact your professor and ask, just to see that you're doing what he expects.

 

Absolutely, I am following all of his directions to the 'T', and we are in fact thoroughly applying Error and Uncertainty. Following with my design doc statements, it was the same there where we were expected to follow some guidelines on how to format the document. We were however given outside examples just to allow us to observe how one might adopt a personal style and to see how the 'pros' were doing it. And this is all I am really intending here, not to find answers about how I should be approaching the problem, but simply to see what the big shots do.

 

Thanks for the input moo!

 

I would really love to see an example from Klaynos, if he is up to it??

 

Or moo??

[mooeypoo]

Absolutely, I am following all of his directions to the 'T', and we are in fact thoroughly applying Error and Uncertainty. Following with my design doc statements, it was the same there where we were expected to follow some guidelines on how to format the document. We were however given outside examples just to allow us to observe how one might adopt a personal style and to see how the 'pros' were doing it. And this is all I am really intending here, not to find answers about how I should be approaching the problem, but simply to see what the big shots do.

 

Thanks for the input moo!

 

I would really love to see an example from Klaynos, if he is up to it??

 

Or moo??

 

Hm. I might actually have a lab report somewhere, I'll need to dig through my documents, but the above formats are way better than what I can give you.

 

If you want actual examples, though, here are good ones:

 

(Annotated!)

 

http://physics.wku.e...iles/sample.pdf

 

Also,if you want, you can send/show your lab report and we'll give you input.

 

~mooey

[Xittenn]

It's a very cute sea otter!

[ajb]

If you want preprints of published papers, and I am not saying that these will actually help you much, try the arXiv.

[Xittenn]

Yes, I've read a couple of yours. No, I was hoping for experiment logs, we want to see this, we will do something like this, and if the results were correct we were right. I'm surprised there aren't repositories for this sort of thing.

[mooeypoo]

It's a very cute sea otter!

 

.... whoops!

 

Well, I guess I can take comfort in the fact that my mis-pasted link was.. uhm.. PG13.

 

 

 

 

Here is the actual annotated example: http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/110769.pdf

[Xittenn]

.... whoops!

 

Well, I guess I can take comfort in the fact that my mis-pasted link was.. uhm.. PG13.

 

 

 

 

Here is the actual annotated example: http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/110769.pdf

 

 

Thanks moo I'll take a look at it after English. I don't now how PG13 that was, the Otter seemed to be enjoying himself just a little too much!