Preparing a Laboratory Report

 

Strategy

1) Invent a title.  Layout your data, figures, graphs, photographs and observations.  Arrange the data making a “story-board” of your results.  Decide on what order makes the most sensible exposition of your discoveries.  Design an outline and write the Results section integrating the figures etc.  being careful to make direct reference to the figures and tables you include.  (No “orphan” figures). 

 

2) Research the background.  Find papers published on your subject.  These can address the tools and methods you used, the organisms and their life histories, or particular biological pathways involved.  A good starting point is a recently published, high quality text book (one with citations),  “review articles”, and more and more commonly, information that appears in on-line publications searchable by your web browsers.  Note, unless a web resource represents a peer reviewed, on-line publication, it is not generally considered a reputable resource.  You are now ready to write the Introduction.

 

3) Write the Materials & Methods, Literature Cited and Figure Legends double-checking that you actually refer to each citation listed and each figure included. 

 

4) Consider what your study uncovered: where you started, and what you learned.  Examine your data to identify what each result or observation meant.  “Mine” every observation for all that it can yield!  Consider everything you can glean from it.  Exercise discrimination to sort what your data said (the facts) from what it meant (interpretation).  In the Discussion, review the investigation.  What did you set out to find, what experiments did you conduct or observations did you make, what did you see and what is your interpretation?  Where should you go next?  Discussion is also a place to cite other studies that bear on your discoveries, or future investigations. 

 

5) Last, consider the whole body of work, and write the Abstract.  Be brief.  What did you do, and what did you see?  Re-examine the title you have chosen and alter it if necessary.

 

Anatomy

Title:  Unless this is your 20th research paper on a subject, or your results represent a legitimate paradigm shift, avoid “cutesy” titles.  A title should allow a casual browser to know immediately what is interesting about your work:  what the subject is and the direction of your inquiry.

 

Abstract:  Ideally, two sentences: what you did, and what you saw.  Succinctly state what you set out to discover, and what you concluded.

 

Introduction:  Background, history and context.  Tell us about the biology you set off to explore.  What is already known?  Tell us about the tools you are using (if appropriate).  What current questions form the context for this mystery?  If you have a clear hypothesis going in, state this, or else clearly state the question your study was designed to explore.  This is a good place for a brief literature review. 

 

Methods & Materials:  In text format (not bullet statements, not numbered instructions) describe the materials, tools and experimental design you used in this study.  Well known techniques or procedures can be mentioned casually.  Give enough detail, that a naive reader could recreate your investigation and get the same results.  Flow diagrams can be a useful means of summarizing long procedures.  If you departed from the instructed procedures, note this and explain why.  Do not load this section with unnecessary details. 

 

Results:  Use narrative!  Figures and tables should be imbedded within the narrative flow, not dropped (orphaned) on the page.  Present results in an orderly, coherent sequence.  Include only such data as is pertinent to your subject.   Publish your best results, not a history of what went wrong, and subsequently was fixed.  Avoid interpreting your results here.  Simply state the observations.  Identify any controls you might have used.

 

Discussion:  This section allows you to interpret your results.  Review each experiment, and “unpack” it.  What did it mean?  What did it tell you?  How do you interpret what it told you?  What trends do you recognize?  Speculate, but clearly identify your speculation.  Finally, suggest where this investigation should go next.  Cite articles that address the future of this work (tools or resources you might use). 

 

Acknowledgements:  It is customary to recognize funding sources, and people or institutions that supported your work.

 

Literature Cited:  Include a minimum of two articles and one book.  Follow the accepted format citations in scientific literature:

 

            Boorman, L.A. and S.R.J. Wodell.  1966.  The topograph, an instrument of

                        measuring in microtopography.  Ecology  47:869-870.  (article)

 

            Jones, J.A.  1985.  The Genetics of Arthropods.  Wadsworth Publishers, Belmont,

                        California.  pp. 42-87.  (Book)

 

Citing Reference Material in the Text. 

            1) Use the name and year system as indicated by these examples:

 

            One author:  Bellrose (1950) or (Bellrose 1950).

            Two authors:  Bellrose and Lowe (1950) or (Bellrose and Lowe 1950).

            Three or more:  Bellrose, et al. (1950) or (Bellrose, et al. 1950).

 

            2) Placement of the parentheses depends on sentence structure.

 

                        Bellrose et al. (1950) reported that wood ducks were once abundant in

                                    Illinois.

 

                        Wood ducks were once abundant in Illinois (Bellrose et al. 1950).

 

 

 

Tables and Figures.

 

Each table and figure must be able to stand alone (its caption or heading should make it understandable to the reader without reference to the text).

 

Tables:  Place headings above the tables.  Each heading should be concise, but explain the content of the table. 

 

example:

 

Table 1.  Energy associated with light at various wavelengths.

_____________________________________________________________

Wavelength (A)                   Color of Light                      Cal/ Einstein

______________________________________________________________

 

3950                                                    violet                                      71,800

4900                                                    blue                                        57,880

5900                                                    yellow                                             48,060

6500                                                    red                                          43,480

7500                                                    far-red                                    37,800

______________________________________________________________

 

 

Figures: Captions should be placed beneath each figure.  captions should be brief, concise, and explain the content of the figure.  Identify X and Y axes of graphs with labels and units.  Number figures consecutively. 

 

                                    1.0

 

                                    0.8

 

                                    0.6

Light

Absorbance               0.4

(@ 750 nm)    

                                    0.2

           

                                    0      ___________________________________________________

 

                                                0                      1                      2                      3                      4

                                                Protein Concentration (micrograms per Liter)

                                    Figure 1.  A standard curve for protein concentration obtained by

                                    the Lowry method.  The protein used was bovine serum alumin.

 

 

Style:  Decide which person to write in, and be consistent throughout.  We...  or I... depending on whether it was a group project or an individual effort.  Usually scientific papers are written in the past tense:  We performed a series of experiments...