Writing a Lab Report: A Guide to All Science Students
It is important to realize that you will be required to write a lab report at one point in your learning process. This paper will eventually chip into the overall marks you get for the whole of your education. Therefore, you have to ensure that you produce an impeccable paper at any given point.
It follows then that writing a remarkable lab report should be a walk in the park for any student. In this article, we shall look at the steps you should follow when writing your report. Read on to find out how to go about the whole writing process.
Taking Notes and Writing the Report
Normally, when you are taking notes while taking a lab course, you will have various reasons as to why you are doing so. For instance, you may be trying to keep track of the experiments you have conducted. Alternatively, you could be looking into a phenomenon that is expected to occur in the lab. Whatever the reason, it is crucial to ensure that you take sufficient notes during the trials.
Just as important, ensure that you write down all the outcomes from your experiments as soon as you record them. This will be immensely beneficial when it comes to writing the lab report later on. It will then be easier for you to comb out the relevant sections of the paper.
Collecting Data and Writing the Report
As we had previously established, you will eventually be required to write a lab report. Together with the notes you have made during the trials, you must ensure that you put them into action and develop an analysis. Remember remember to always jot down all the important points you shall include in your paper. Furthermore, you must ensure that you have noted any relevant hypotheses that you formulated during your experiments.
Once you are content with the notes you have taken, you must then sort out your thoughts together. Identify the different ideas you have concerning the topic of the trial. It will be necessary to evaluate each of them and try to formulate an argument that may support your preferred theory. It is also essential to note down all the experiments you conducted during the trial.
It would be best if you next transferred all the highlighted points into the respective paragraphs. However, it would be equally crucial to identify the sentences that connect the paragraphs. Ideally, all your proof and discussion points should lie within the introductory section of your report.
Proofreading the Report
Once you are satisfied with your paper, you must then go through it again to pick out any errors. First and foremost, it is vital to ensure that you have followed the structure stipulated by your instructor. Furthermore, you must also ensure that all the sections are written in the correct sequence.
As a matter of fact, it would be best if you had gone through the whole writing process a couple of times over to ensure that you had not missed out on any critical points. It would also be in your best interests to ensure that you read the paper out loud once you are done with writing.