Guidelines for Writing Long Laboratory Reports Spring 2009 This document will provide you with some guidelines for writing laboratory reports for EML 4304L. Most of the rules discussed here apply to the writing of technical reports in general. Knowing how to write good (technical) reports is a very useful skill that will serve you well in your career. Various sections of the report and a brief description of their contents are discussed in the following. Note that you do not have to use exactly the same sub-headings as given here, however, each section must appear in the order in which it is discussed. I. Cover Page Each report (short or long) must have a cover page providing the following information: Experiment number and title. Name of author. Group number and names of other group members. Date when experiment was performed and date report was due. II. Abstract (Executive Summary) An abstract or executive summary is the essence of the whole report. By reading a well-written abstract the reader should know what was done, why it was done, how it was done and what the significant results were. If you were asked to determine specific values of certain parameters or properties in the experiment, e.g. lift coefficient, thermal conductivity, etc, you should include the numerical values of these parameters in the abstract. The abstract should be very brief, between 200-250 words and should not provide details of the experiment. The purpose of the abstract is to provide enough information to the reader that s/he may get the gist of the study and then decide whether to read the report for details. Remember that an abstract is NOT AN INTRODUCTION; this is probably the most common mistakes made by students. III. Background and Introduction This section is designed to provide the following, but in paragraph form: Background Information: by providing some background you introduce the reader to the problem under study and hence explain the ... Motivation: ... reasons you are conducting the present experiment. You should also state your ... Objectives, i.e. what you hope to learn from this work. It is also important to briefly discuss your... Approach: or how you plan to conduct your study and the reasons for choosing this method. (Note: the details of the experimental approach should be provided in next section)IV. Experimental Techniques The goal of this section is to provide the reader with information so that s/he may make an independent judgement on the overall quality of your experiments and the suitability and accuracy of the measurements techniques. Enough detail must be provided so that the reader can repeat your experiments, if they so desire. Information regarding the following should be included: Hardware: A brief description of the hardware (and software) used to conduct the experiments should be provided. Please use sketches, drawings and pictures of the experimental setup where needed. Procedure: A summary of the procedure used to conduct the experiments should be provided. This should bewritten in paragraph form, not in bulleted or numbered format like the lab manual. V. Results and Discussion This constitutes the ‘meat’ of the report because it presents the results and more importantly your interpretation of the results. It provides a summary of the information learned and the knowledge gained from your experiments. Although in general results and discussion are presented in a narrative form, for the purposes of this class, this section will contain the answers to the questions in the Questions to be Answered section of the lab manual. The answers to questions should be enumerated in the same order as in the manual and precededby a restatement of the question. The questions are structured such that they emphasize the important results and allow you to present data which is significant, from the standpoint of your objectives, and representative of the overall trends (more detailed results may be included in the appendices). You should include any equations and correlations used and any assumptions made in obtaining your results. Detailed calculations should be included in the appendices. In answering to the Report Specifications questions, you must present your results clearly and concisely. Once of the best ways to present your results is in a graphical form, i.e. plots; details and do and do’s of plots are discussed below. Graphical representation is the most powerful and useful form of data presentation and interpretation. So, when presenting significant data, PLOT YOUR RESULTS WHENEVER POSSIBLE. Plotting your results appropriately makes the interpretation and subsequent discussion of the results much easier. It also allows you to recognize general trends (and anomalies) or lack of one, distinguish between significant and unimportant parameters and (this is very important), saves you from having to write pages after pages of text necessary to describe aspects of which can be easily displayed in a single plot. It is important to remember that plots are only useful only if they carefully done. Here are a few pointers on making good plots. • Each plot must have a self-explanatory title. • Choose your axis carefully. (This may not be much of an issue for this class since, in most instances, you are explicitly told what to plot.) Plot your dependent variable on the y axisand the independent on the x axis. Sometimes you may have to experiment to find out which parameters should be plotted against each other. Sometimes, several parameters may have to be combined to form a non-dimensional parameter. In fact, whenever possible, try to non-dimensionalize your variables. You may not always be specifically told how to non-dimensionalize your data. • Clearly label your axis, including units. • Pick your axis range carefully to maximize the space in the plot. For example, if you are plotting velocity on the x-axis where the axis goes from 0 to 100 m/s while the actual range of velocities measured is 20-45 m/s, then you are only using 25% of the x axis space. • Do not randomly connect your data using straight lines. Use a linear fit or an appropriate smooth curve to illustrate the trend. The equation for the fit should be provided on the graph and the justification for using the particular fit should be provided in the discussion section. If the data is random then just plot the data without any