Physics 109 - Formal reports |
A formal report is a document, separate from your lab notebook, that reports the results of an experiment. There are many versions of this out in the real world, such as papers for scientific journals, short papers for conference proceedings, or technical reports for a company. The exact form of a report can vary alot, but as a start you'll be learning to write in the basic form used in scientific journal. You can find an example of a report written in LaTeX. You can use whatever word processing program you like to write the report, but the format should follow a few key rules. The report that you will be writing for your first year lab should be brief, a maximum of 1000 words plus two figures and one diagram.
Your report this term will be a summary of your LRC experiment.
1. Provide a title, author and date.
2. Write an abstract, which is a very short summary of the whole experiment, in just a few sentences. 1 mark
3. Write an introduction - this includes the context or background behind the experiment and a summary of what you are going to be reporting on. 1 mark
4. Give a description of the important details of your experimental technique - enough that someone else would be able to repeat the experiment based on your report. 2 marls
5. Give the experimental results - usually in the form of graphs with some text to explain the graph. Don't forget axis labels, a title and a caption. 2 marks for each graph, including a least squares fit
6. Summarize the analysis of the data and draw conclusions. 3 marks
If you are interested in using LaTeX to write your formal report, the easiest way to start is to use an existing LaTeX file and then edit it by inserting your own text. The LaTeX source for the example report above can be found by clicking here. You will also need to download the .ps file for the figure. The basic codes for taking a LaTeX file and turning it into a printable format such as postscript or .pdf are available as freeware. There are also now many tools availbale to help you use LateX, such as the almost-free WinEDT for Windows. More details on this software can be found on the PHYS209 Website LaTeX Notes
English - Use complete sentences and paragraphs, and check your spelling and grammar. A great experimental result is of no use if you can't communicate the results to others.
Abstracts - The abstract is not just an introduction, it should actually summarize the key results of the paper in a few sentences. Abstracts are meant to stand alone as a summary of the paper since they appear by themselves in searchable databases.
Method - Don't just give a list of instructions on how the apparatus was used. dig a little deeper and explain how the apparatus works as well as how you used it.
Data - One usually does not give large tables of data. In modern research and publishing the large sets of numbers often appear in tables available on the internet. In your papers, graphs are a better way to display your data.
Graphs - Don't forget axis labels, axis units, a legend, and error bars. Include a caption that summarizes the content and meaning of the figure. Well written captions make it possible to understand the main idea of the paper just by looking at the figures and reading the captions and the conclusions.
Summarizing results - It is very helpful to a reader to summarize your results in a compact and readable way. For instance, the experiment could include a table with all of the fitting results and a brief discussion of how all of the numbers compare to one another.
Conclusions - Make your conclusions as specific and quantitative as possible. Statements such as 'I learned alot' are not conclusions. Try to extract as much physics as you can from the measurements. for instance, in the mechanical oscillator experiment, you could actually draw a conclusion about how the damping depends on the spacing of th damping magnets.
Significant Figures - Although you should keep a few extra digits in your calculations, round off your numbers properly when you give quantiative results in a paper. For instance 24.73659+/-0.82892 should be 24.7+/-0.8. Sometimes one extra digit is warranted. For instance, 2.2373+/-0.1524 should be 2.34+/-0.15.
References - If you use something that is not your own work, give a reference. For instance, if ou use equations from somewhere, even the web-based instructions, if you don't give a reference you are committing plagiarism! If you can find text or journal references, they are preferable to web references which are too unstable over time.
Keep Things Brief - There are many ways to keep papers brief and readable. For instance, you can sometimes pack related data sets all into a single figure, rather than displaying multiple figures. Avoid non-essential tables of data. Summarize key final results in compact tables.
Abstract - Keep it brief and make every single word count. The abstract must be self-contained with no undefined symbols aor acronyms. The Abstract must explicitly state the results of the experiment.
Keep things brief - Don't pad the introduction with too much material that is not really relevant to the experiment. When discussing your methods, don't go into as much detail as you would in your complete lab notes. Give just enough of the methodsto make the experiment understandable and something that an outsider could reproduce with alittle effort. keep the number of figures to the minimum that you need to tell the story. for instance, raw data plots are not needed if you later show the same data along with a fit to a model.
Comparing your experimental results - Be honest in your conclusions when comparing values. If your result agrees with a theoretical value within your uncertainty (or at most two times your uncertainty), then there is agreement and you can draw conclusions based on that agreemnt. If there is a disagreement, say so and then try to point to a way forwards to settle the disagreement. This might be done by comparing to other people's axperiments, by suggesting tests for possible systematic errors that you didn't account for, or by trying to do the experiment a different way yourself.
Don't assume too much prior knowledge - Don't use jargon that is not readily understood outside of this course. For instance, don't assume that when you say m=1.5 that everyone understands that we usually use m to represent slope. Don't assume that everyone is familiar with the particular data analysis tool that you are using. Don't assume that the reader has access to the manuals used in the laboratory.