If any of these codes appear on your report you should consider that your report is deficient in that respect and seek to make your next effort better.
1 |
Neatness. I donÕt require that lab reports be typed. I do require them to be neat. Clean edges on notebook paper. Use rulers (straight edges) to make tables and graphs. Write in a legible hand. When you make a mistake you can draw a single horizontal line through it but donÕt ÒscribbleÓ it out or make a sloppy erasure. |
2 |
Organization. Your report is intended to communicate some specific things to me (or another audience, perhaps your classmates, perhaps a professional considering offering you a job or a scholarship or perhaps just represent carefully prepared work that you could proudly displayed attached to the refrigerator at home by a magnet). Make sure that anyone reading it can follow your work and that it has enough commentary to make sense. |
3 |
Data. You measured the wrong thing or measured it wrongly. Usually I expect a lab to proceed through several stages: A. Announcement and planning where I give you a problem and perhaps suggest some resources and you decide what to measure and how to measure it B. Execution where we go into the laboratory and collect our data (to the extent possible IÕm just trying to protect your safety and the integrity of our equipment – IÕm consciously trying to permit you to make your own mistakes here. C. De-brief where I discuss the physics of the experiment and telegraph what should have been measured and how. D. Reporting. Where you act on all that you now know to report your work. It is not prohibited that upon learning that you made a data collection mistake that you find an opportunity to correct that mistake before writing up the work. |
4 |
Analysis. You made substantial mistakes in the way the data was used in order to verify or support your hypothesis or to solve the problem or you just didnÕt get the analysis done. |
5 |
Completeness. You simply failed to respond to all of the requirements of the task. |
6 |
Units. We generally work in the MKS (meter-kilogram-second) system. In some cases it is possible to get ÒcorrectÓ results without strict adherence to this system but very often is NOT. The safest bet is to always convert centimeters and inches to meters, grams to kilograms and pounds to Newtons in ALL cases. Always label a measurement with the units that the value represents no matter how often you use it. |
7 |
Calculations. Recheck your calculated values. Show details of your calculations. |
8 |
Significant digits. As of September 17, we havenÕt yet discussed significant digits. The number of digits in a measured value is a reflection of the precision with which that measurement was made. An excess number of digits is tantamount to claiming a level of precision that you are not entitled to. WeÕll discuss this at length soon. |
9 |
Make it clear where your data comes from. The spring lab really begs a diagram to support the conservation of energy work. |