lab report Format

A. Title Page
The title page should be made of unlined paper and should have the following:
a) Name, period, date due in upper right hand corner.
b) Title of lab centered on page
c) Lower right hand corner, partner(s), and date of experiment
d) An illustration in the mood of the lab can be included. i.e., sketch of the equipment used, illustration of a reaction, etc.

B. Objective or Purpose
A brief statement of the reason for doing this lab in sentence form.

C. Safety
The safety precautions of this lab should be listed. Special handling of chemicals should be noted.

D. Procedure
A brief description of the method you are using. You may refer to the lab instructions but do not copy them into the report, just summarize. A person who understands chemistry should be able to read this section and know what you are doing.

E. Data and or Results
ROUGH DATA PAGE: This should be the data or results as you recorded them in the laboratory. Data should all be recorded in ink and marked out with one horizontal line if it needs to be changed. Include a brief statement as to why the change had to be made. This page need not be neat and might even be smeared with spills. Your rough data sheet must be initialed by your teacher before you leave the laboratory and needs to be completed by both lab partners.

REFINED DATA PAGE: This is the same as the former but now neat and precise. This is usually prepared outside the laboratory.

OBSERVATIONS: If an experiment isn’t quantitative, then this page is the place to record your observations, write equations, etc.

F. Calculations and Graphs
You should show how major calculations are made. Give the basic equation, unit equation, and your answer with the correct value. Always carry out calculations in the proper number of significant digits. If absolute and relative errors or deviations are to be calculated they should be shown in this section. If graphs are included, it should be an entire page using the entire piece of graph paper to expand your lines, label alt axes and give each graph a title. If the experiment isn’t quantitative this section may be omitted.

G. Questions
This is the place to record the answers to the questions following each laboratory. You do not need to rewrite question but your complete sentence answer should leave no doubt to what question you are answering.

H. Conclusion:
This is one of the most important parts of the laboratory. In this section you should restate the objective and tell whether or not you accomplished it. Here there should be a discussion of the theory you have demonstrated in the laboratory. You should discuss your errors in this section along with the calculation of errors you made in the data section. Remember only discuss errors inherent in the lab, not human ones, such as calculation errors or errors in measurement.