This format for lab reports will most likely carry you through to fourth year science courses where complete lab reports are often required. If you are not planning to go onto university or college, learning this format will help you build organizational, writing, and data analysis skills. It is quite likely that this report writing exercise will help you in some way beyond this high school chemistry class.
I highly recommend that you spend some time becoming familiar with this format if you are planning to go into sciences at university. I have included an outline of each section that should be present and a written description of what would be required for each. Each section has a link to a sample lab that I have written for you. This format is similar to that required at the University of Victoria in third and fourth year chemistry courses.
In university or college, it is expected that there will need to be a few adjustments made for each different course, but this is usually outlined in a lab manual. It is also important to check how each course expects the "Literature Cited" section to be organized because they tend to be all different.
You can click on the title for each section and it will take you to the sample lab as well.
** Because I write a LOT of feedback to aid learning, please double-space the Discussion and Introduction Sections when they have been assigned.
Laboratory Report Format
Title: must be descriptive for all the sections completed in the lab. The title should be general rather than detailed.
Introduction: This section contains all background information about the lab that you are doing. For example, if you are doing a lab involving acid/base titrations, this section would include such things as: what is an acid/base reaction, what are titrations, what are they used for, what is an indicator, what is an end point and equivalence point and how are they different, etc. If you are doing a precipitation lab, you might include such things as: what is a precipitate, information about precipitation reactions, complete ionic and net ionic reactions, spectator ions, qualitative analysis and selective precipitation, solubility, the solubility product constant, and perhaps solubility equilibria and Le Chatelier's principle. The idea is to include enough information so that a layperson could understand the experiment and that it is related to the lab we are doing.
This is generally a large section of the lab (usually a page or more) and is the one that involves actually cracking open your textbook or looking at classroom notes to find the information. This section is to be in paragraph form and the real art (ie: where the big marks come in) is in trying to get it to flow properly so that it is not just a bunch of unrelated sentences containing unrelated facts and theories. Because you are getting information from an outside source (outside your own brain), you need to reference that information so as to give credit to the person who wrote it. The chemistry method (most subjects are different) is illustrated in the sample lab. It uses numbers to correspond to the number of the reference listed in the literature cited section, are in order of appearance, and are shown as numbers in brackets at the end of the sentence. Keep in mind, referencing is not just necessary when we quote and outside source. IT IS NECESSARY EACH AND EVERY TIME THE KNOWLEDGE WRITTEN IS NOT OUR OWN. If you had to look it up, write a reference to it. *Please double-space this section
Purpose or Objective: A sentence or two explaining what we are trying to find out by doing this lab. No, it's not because I told you to or because you'll fail if you don't. This should be in sentence form only and you should either pick out the really important objectives or connect the ones listed using conjunctions and commas.
Procedure: This section is usually not written in its full form because lab procedures are very involved. It is acceptable to write something like: "Please refer to lab manual.........." and write the full reference to the manual that you got it from (ie: a bibliography-type reference). This section must also include any procedure that has been changed or added (was a different solution used, different volumes, etc.)
Data and Observations: This section contains any information that you gathered during the course of the lab. The data and observations are normally kept separate and both MUST BE IN TABLE FORM (outlined with a ruler). No calculated information is placed here and no judgments are made. All tables must have a title and number associated with it. This way, you can refer to it in your discussion section.
Calculations: This section has will show sample calculations of all the calculations that you did to complete the lab (although DV=Vf - Vi is probably not necessary). You only have to do one of each type of calculation, but you have to have a title for each.
Results: The answers from each calculation that you have done to complete the lab must be here. Results MUST BE IN TABLE (outlined with a ruler) FORM with titles for each table needed. Graphs also belong in this section. Each graph must take up as much of the page as possible, have a descriptive title and a number.
Discussion: This will probably be the largest section of your report (usually over 1 page long). Start by saying something along the lines of: according to the data, the purpose was/was not achieved or the objective was/was not reached. In this section you will state what your results were and whether or not these results were what you expected. Then outline what was expected (according to your textbook, lab book or class notes). You will need to understand the background theory before you do this section. Basically, you are validating your results with what the current chemistry understanding is on this topic. Much of this section talks about errors as well. If there may have been errors, point them out AND attempt to outline how each may have affected the results. This section is essentially a comparison of your results with what you expected to see. When explaining your results and graphs, refer to them by number (ex: see graph 1). It would be a good idea, in the interest of thoroughness, to explain all tables and all graphs in turn. This way, the discussion flows somewhat like a story. *Please double-space this section
Conclusion: A one or two sentence account of your results. This sentence should address the sentence or two from your purpose or objective section. If we were supposed to determine a value, it should be stated here. If we were only supposed to see a trend, outline the trend in a sentence.
Literature Cited: If you have taken any information from an outside source, you must write a reference here. The exact format of each reference will depend on the subject of the lab. Chemistry lab reports generally follow the same method as in the "Journal of the American Chemical Society;" microbiology follows the method seen in the "Journal of Bacteriology", etc. If the lab manual doesn't tell you, just look up one of the journals that the subject uses and follow that method.