Many of you will seek either temporary or permanent jobs where you will ask by your potential employer for examples of your achievements. The ability to produce a neat, concise, accurate lab report to show the employer is a powerful statement. If your plans for the future include attending graduate schools, the value of these reports is immense in illustrating your research and graduate work potential.

Lab reports are the most frequent kind of document written in engineering.  Report writing skills for an engineer is a must. The practicing engineer faces a never-ending stream of reports to sponsoring agencies, division heads, customers, etc. 

Lab reports are written for several reasons:

1. to communicate the laboratory work.        
2. information for company to base decisions on the results.
3. document your findings and communicate their significance.

Present here is a general format for lab reports that you can adapt or modify as needed per request of your instructor (who may choose a variation in organizational structure best serving their experimental needs).

 In general, the report should address itself to the following questions:

1. What was to be done?
2. How was it to be done?
3. What was actually done?
4. How was it done?
5. What were the problems encountered?
6. What was learned?

Tell a good story

A good lab report does more than present data; iu>t demonstrates your comprehension of the concepts behind the data. Merely recording the expected and observed results is not sufficient; you should also identify how and why differences occurred, explain how they effected your experiment, and show your understanding of the underpinning principles of the experiment.

Keep in mind that your report must be concise and clear. A format, however helpful, cannot replace clear thinking and organized writing. You should not assume that you are writing the report only for the instructor, but rather for the world. So, if you are stating a fact that your instructor discussed either during the class/lab time, make sure to explain it adequately. Make sure that your report progresses in a logical order and the material smoothly flows from section to section. You should also be keenly aware of ccopyright issues. Make absolutely sure that all statements from sources are given credit. This includes the original source(s) location and author(s). [See links to APA format.]

Although the following guideline may not be exactly what you choose to follow, nevertheless it is an effective approach to a well-organized report. /span>

Introduction

There should be a brief outline of the overall purpose of the experiment and any additional information such as special techniques and goals. In writing this section, give a brief overview of the experiment, but most importantly, point out the important issues. Determine if a theory section is required in order to derive analytical aspects of the experiment. Again, this should be brief but not just a repetition of what is in the text. If you want to use several outside sources for expressions and definitions, they should be included here. All information sources must be documented as entries in a references section.

Design Approach

Most of the experiments in this lab are design oriented. This section should have a general statement of your design philosophy. How did you go about solving the problem? Basically, this section would describe how you planned to carry out the experiment and why would it worked. This does not mean that you should include step-by-step set of calculations, but instead requires a listing or description of ideas and methods used to meet the experimental goal.

Theory and Calculations

This section should include detail calculations for your experiment. If a sketch is used, it must be labeled accordingly. This is especially crucial when a CNC machine program is included. Each portion of the program (not each line) must refer to what task is being done by that section of the program. Label the images (A, B, C, etc. or point 1, point 2, and so on) and refer to the labels in the documentation of the programs and other portions of your write-up, for clarity.

Experiment Procedure

This section should include all procedural steps. The equipment used should be listed with information such as the type, manufacturer, and model. Basically, this section would describe how you actually carried out the experiment. If, for example, you had to initialize a point on the CNC machine, then describe how and why you did it.

Analysis

There are two types of analytical work which students often confuse. One type is theoretical, in which you use experimental values to obtain results using only the mathematical models (formulas) such as finding appropriate rpm given the speed and feed rate. The other need for analytical work is when you must change the form of your results, for example, from inches to centimeters and so on.  

In either case, a sample calculation is all that is required. If it is a calculation that is repeated, just do it once. Then after that, simply tabulate (or plot) the other instances. Make sure that you understand how the numbers are calculated because similar calculations may need to be performed in the exams.

Discussion of the Results and Corrections

In most cases, you will have two types of results, either a procedure that produces a product, or just a procedure. You will demonstrate the procedure in the lab demonstration part of your assignment and if a product is involved you will submit it along with your report. Please note that you first submit your report and then shortly after that perform your demonstration. Sometimes, labs will not go as perfectly as you thought they would. These differences between the expected and actual results need to be reflected and discussed in the report.

These results should be discussed in view of whether or not they point out the important aspects of an experiment. A large part of this discussion is related to errors and how well the demonstration matches the expected results. When demonstrations do not match the expected results, the problem could be in one of many areas:

1. Usually, the most significant differences arise from the mistake made in the calculations. If the difference between a calculated value and its actual one is pronounced, you can easily identify it with a dry run of your experiment. Smaller errors are usually not detected easily and therefore, it is recommended that a different team member than the one, who performed the original calculations, double-checks them.
2. Another source of error is in the programming of the equipment. For example, instead of going to the right, you send a command to the machine to go to the left. Again, these are easily identified with a dry run.

Another possible source of error might be the machine calibration. But, remember that you are using very accurate machines so that this should not cause appreciable error. All the machines are kept in calibrated forms. However, it is possible that the team which worked prior to you caused the mis-calibration and did not report it. Please make sure to report any problems that might arise during your work. You are in a learning environment and errors do occur from time to time. If something happened to a machine while you were working on it please report it immediately. It is much easier to fix a problem if we know how it occurred than just trying to troubleshoot.

So, when a difference is found between expected and demonstrated results, try to pin it down to one of the above. Do not just casually comment that "the CNC machine caused it", but show what in the CNC machine operation caused the error and show that if this effect indeed was not present that the expected results would have been achieved.

Conclusion

In this section, you should summarize your reports. You should state what you set out to do, what you did and conclusions that can be drawn from what you did. You should highlight the main points of the lab and any shortcomings it had. It is also important to mention what was learned from the lab and how it is related to the lecture and previous labs. You can also state your opinion of the experiment and give suggestions for improving it. This section is usually brief but it is extremely important to the reader in that it is the clincher, the last thing that they read. It is important to leave the reader with a good feeling about your report.

Each member of the team is required to submit an individual lab report.  The team may collaborate on the following four items: pictures, graphs, data, and drawings.  These items may be duplicates of other team members’ submissions.

However, the report must be individual efforts for each team member.  You may discuss amongst yourselves the concepts and material, however each member must write their own distinctive version. 

It is extremely important that your report be professionally done. All lab reports should be neat, precise and concise and must show clearly what was done and what was observed. All figures, diagrams, graphs and tables should be properly labeled. You have access to a digital camera and you can take pictures to include in your report. If you need help with image processing let us know. Please do not hesitate to ask questions, and consult this page often to make sure that your reports are in an appropriate format. Do not forget that it is both the style of your report and its contents along with the presentation that makes-up your grade.

Remember that you work in a group, but each team member submits his/her own report. It is highly recommended that the team members work together to finalize the report.  

·        Good writing in science is not significantly different from good writing in other fields. The rules of good grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style still apply. Precise language is highly valued (know the names of the tools), as are clear expression and logical organization.

·        Write to convey understanding, not to impress. Use the simplest language consistent with this goal. Eliminate irrelevant information, no matter how interesting you think it is, or how hard you worked to gather it.

·        Build a strong first paragraph. Sometimes it is easier to compose that first paragraph only after writing the rest of a report. Make clear exactly what you are setting out to do. Every paragraph should follow logically from the preceding one. State your case and build it carefully, providing supporting evidence where necessary.

·        Use the active voice rather than the passive voice -- i.e., use the personal pronouns "I" and "we" freely. "We chose to measure cell diameter" rather than "It was decided to measure cell diameter."

·        Allow enough time to write a rough draft of your report, and ask your team members to read it and tell you whether its organization and style make sense. Then revise according to their suggestions. Proofread it on paper, not on the computer screen. If you have any reservations about your spelling ability, use a spelling checker.

• Collect data you believe will be useful to answering the important questions you have raised.

• Organize reports around issues, not solely data.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you know what alert words are? See examples.