Some advice first…
One of the first things I always tell students about is LaTeX (pronounced “lay-tek”). For typesetting it absolutely destroys the usual software options, like Word. But, since it’s a markup language it has a learning curve and the earlier you can start learning it in your academic life, the better off you’ll be. Not only do documents produced with LaTeX look much more attractive and professional than those written in Word, but it also takes a lot of the headache out of formatting. It is used so ubiquitously in the sciences that some Universities have even started offering undergraduate courses in how to use it, yet many people still don’t discover the joys of LaTeX until they start a postgraduate degree and they get thrown in at the deep end by their thesis advisor. Starting to learn it when you have a deadline upon you is not ideal – but once you learn to use it, you may resent having to ever use Word again.
The idea is simple: instead of formatting all the elements of your document individually, you tell LaTeX what type of element they are with special tags. For example, you would wrap an identifying tag around a \section{Section Heading}, and then you can change the formatting of all the section headings at once simply by changing options in your document header. Add to that the automated figure/table/equation numbering (so you can insert things without having to renumber everything), and that it will arrange your captions into the correct places, and the bibliography management options, and you can begin to see how much more powerful a tool it is than a general word processor.
There is plenty of free, open source software available to make using LaTeX easier, and I recommend the use of Overleaf in particular. Overleaf is an online, cloud-based system that has a huge number of templates available, and a fantastically detailed help wiki. You can sign up for free, but check with your University to see if they have an affiliation – this will give you access to the subscribed version for free. You probably won’t need the amount of space this gives you, as an undergraduate, but if it’s free you may as well take advantage!
With that extended throat-clearing, let’s get started with some examples so you can see how to best present your lab report.
Numbering your elements
In your report, you’ll have various numbers of different elements; equations, tables, and figures. Every single one of these elements must have a number to help the reader locate it, and each set of elements is numbered separately. It helps to look at an example here, so let’s consider Fig. 1, which is a mock-up of how a report page might look.
We can see that we have one equation, two tables, and three figures. A table is the first element that appears, followed by an equation, but we don’t number the table as “1” and the equation as “2”, because the table and equation are different types of elements – so each is separately numbered as “1”. Within each set of element types, the numbers must be sequential according to the order in which they appear in the report.
One very common error, especially in reports produced in Word (which doesn’t track the numbering for you), is that people move the elements around while they’re writing, and either forget to fix the numbering in the captions, or they remember to fix the captions and forget to fix the text so their text refers to the wrong figures. You must always refer to your different elements by their number when you’re discussing them in the text (e.g., “we can see from Fig. 2”, “as is shown by Eq. 4”, etc.).
If you’re producing your report in LaTeX, this is actually much easier. Each element sits inside its own environment tags (e.g., \begin{equation} and \end{equation}). You’ll then put a \label{X} inside that element’s environment, where X is the unique “name” of that object. You can then point LaTeX to that element using a \ref{X} command in your body text. In this way, LaTeX matches up the labels and handles the numbering for you, so that you always refer to the correct object no matter how many times you move them around. Pretty nifty!
When you’re picking labels, try to use something you’ll naturally remember when you’re writing, to make the process more straightforward. For example, \label{fig:setup} for a diagram of your experimental setup, or \label{fig:bar_graph} if you have just one bar graph, rather than \label{img234729587934538768} or \label{figure1}. You probably noticed that I put a little preface (fig:, tab: for tables, eq: for equations) before the name; using these little identifiers is a good habit to start setting early. This one little habit will save you having to come up with unique names for absolutely everything. It doesn’t take long to run out of ideas, and referring to things by number only works if you know you won’t be changing the order they appear in!
Captions
Every table and figure needs to have a caption that describes what it represents. The caption should be detailed enough that if a reader flicks through your report and wants to know about the figure, they won’t have to pore through the entire document to find more information about it. Usually, the biggest mistake with captions in lab reports is that they’re not detailed enough. You don’t need to repeat the body text in the caption, but just summarise what the table or figure is about, and what is shows. If you’ve lifted the element from somewhere else (like a website) then you should also show a citation to that source in the caption.
Equations
Equations in your lab report may be shown either in-line (as part of the paragraph) or on their own line, but the latter is more usual for most of the cases you’ll encounter. Consider Fig. 2 as an example, which shows the time-independent Schrödinger equation. I’ll refer to each of the coloured boxes here by their number with a hash (e.g., #1). Good luck trying to show an equation like this in the paragraph text! Either it will be completely squashed and unreadable because of the fraction, or it’ll mess up the line spacing around it. It’s more usual in a lab report to show an equation as we have done here, on its own line, with an identifying equation number (#4) next to it. The equation number must always be aligned with the right margin of the text, and the equation should be centred (#1) – this helps to make sure that the equation is given prominence, and also that the equation number doesn’t get jumbled up into the equation.
As you can see in our example, we refer to the equation by its equation number (#2). If you have to show a derivation, it’s best to give each line a different equation number so you can refer to each specific line in the text if you need to. You probably also noticed that the body text is fully justified, i.e., the software adjusts the letter spacing so that both the left and right margins are aligned neatly. This is standard in the sciences, since it’s so much tidier than the default option of left-aligned you get in most word-processing software.
Tables
In the sciences, tables are presented in a rather minimalist fashion. Having a lot of lines bordering all the rows and columns makes the table look busy and untidy, not to mention that if the row spacing is too narrow (which it is by default), the lines can even obscure some of the data. Taking a look at Fig. 3, which shows a table from my own Ph.D. thesis, should start to give you an idea of how scientific tables can look. Note that the spacing of the rows is slightly wider than the usual line spacing, and the contents of each cell are centred to make sure there’s plenty of space around the cell contents. This means you don’t need to mark the cell boundaries with a load of horizontal or vertical lines. The standard is not to have any vertical lines at all, and if your columns have enough space between them then lines shouldn’t be necessary.
Table captions (#1) should go above the table, not below it. This may seem like a petty and pointless rule – who cares, right? – but what happens if you need to include footnotes to your table to give additional explanation or context? If you have the caption right next to the footnotes, they’ll confuse the reader. Tables should each have a number, the same as any other element in your report, and as with everything else, if you need to refer to the table in the text you should do it with the table number.
If you’re doing as I have done and listing the equipment operating specs, you need to include a citation (#2) to show where you got the data from, and it can be convenient to include the citation in the caption so the reader doesn’t have to go digging around in the text for it. If I had been preparing this table for a more general audience, I would have also included some explanation as to why there is a line (#4) separating the two rows at the bottom (but I wasn’t, so I didn’t!). A fellow observational astronomer, but probably few others, would know that the rows above the line represent broad-band filters, while the rows below are both narrow-band filters, all more-or-less in the near-infrared (or at least…what astronomers call the near-infrared). Actually, I could have left out the vertical line (#5), but since the first column is essentially a vertical header, I like to make that clear by marking the boundary.
On the subject of headers, note how the text headers are on the top line, while the corresponding units are underneath. Furthermore, the units themselves are enclosed in square brackets – you could use normal parentheses, I prefer the boxy look – but it’s good to enclose them either way to make clear that they represent the units and are not just part of the header text. For a lab report, you may also want to include the errors in your table. If the error is the same for all the values in a column, this error can be placed into the header – definitely don’t put whole columns of the same value. Otherwise, you can put the error next to the value in its cell. Just make sure the precision of your error matches the precision of your data. What does that mean? It means if you use 3 s.f. (as in my central wavelength column) then your errors can’t be more than 3 s.f. in precision. In my table, the errors are implied by the 50% cut on/off columns, but this is not something you would typically do for a lab report – either way, the precision of these columns matches the data.
Diagrams and plots
Sometimes, if you’re having trouble clearly describing your experimental set up, you may want to include a diagram in your report to illustrate your description for the reader. A diagram should never sit in the report by itself, though – always use it to support your text, not replace it. This means that the labels you use to annotate the diagram have to match both the caption and the text descriptions. It’s common to see students reuse diagrams or illustrations from the lab instructions (with a reference), which may already have some basic annotations (letters, usually). The big mistake students make is to think this is sufficient, but without context or explanation, a diagram like this is no more than a pretty picture. Don’t be afraid to add annotation labels if there aren’t enough, but make absolutely sure that every label on the diagram has a corresponding description in both the body text and the figure caption.
Originality is important, so you’ll usually get more credit for taking the time to make your own (as long as it’s clear). It’s a good demonstration of how you understand the experimental set-up, and it means you can leave out all the unnecessary details. You don’t even need to be able to draw! The clearest diagrams are those uncluttered by pointless levels of detail. After all, someone who wants to recreate your experiment may not have exactly the same piece of equipment available so you don’t need to draw it precisely (or take photos, which are even less clear than a drawing). Create your diagram with the minimum amount of detail required to support whatever you’re describing in the text.
Any kind of image, whether it be a diagram, plot, graph, or illustration (although you shouldn’t need to use the latter), is counted as a figure. Be careful with the colours and other design choices you use – always ask yourself, when you think you’re done, whether or not the figure can be clearly read. If the font is too small on the axes, or if the figures themselves are too small, or if it’s hard to read off the graph because the markers are too big, make sure you fix these issues before you hand it in. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell that your plots are suffering from these issues as they can look great on a large monitor, but look cramped and tiny when you print it. Do a test print and see if the figures still look OK – or even better, get a friend to look them over for you. They’re more likely to spot something you haven’t noticed.
References
There are two primary styles of referencing that are used in the sciences, Harvard and Vancouver. Which one is used varies from one field of study to the next, and even sometimes by journal, but your lab organiser should tell you which style they expect you to use for your reports. Your reference list, or bibliography, should be at the very end of your document, but just before any appendices (if you feel it’s really, definitely necessary to include data tables). The point of this reference list is to allow any interested reader to be able to check out the sources of information you used. This means you should be detailed enough that someone could find the exact book, article, or website you used, and be able to see precisely what that source says.
So, as an example, there’s a quotation from a prominent historian I think is particularly applicable to the sciences, even though that’s the not the originally intended context. We’ll use it to look at the differences in Harvard and Vancouver referencing, and we’ll see how much information we need to put into the reference to make it useful. Here is the original quotation, which I’ll leave here and let you mull the words over:
The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself.
— Carter G. Woodson
In brief, Harvard referencing refers to any specific style in which citations are shown with the author(s) and year (usually in brackets), and the reference list is organised alphabetically. In Vancouver referencing the reference list is organised by order of appearance in the text, and the citations are given with numbers in square brackets (you may be familiar with this through Wikipedia). Harvard style is most prevalent in social sciences and humanities, but is also the standard in astronomy and astrophysics. In other areas of physics and chemistry the Vancouver style is more commonly used, as well as in fields like biomedical sciences. If you’re not sure which one to use, ask one of your lab helpers for guidance! Let’s look at some examples:
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The specific details can vary, but almost all referencing styles can be categorised under one of these two umbrellas. If you accidentally use the “wrong” style you shouldn’t lose too many marks, especially if you are consistent in your formatting because the important thing really is to get the substance right. I’m going to repeat this because it’s so important: every external source you used to write your text has to be cited, and every reference needs to be detailed enough for the reader to track it down. Do your best to make sure that all your references are given the same formatting, but worry more about the content and making sure it’s unambiguous.
On the subject of references, let’s look a bit more closely at the bibliography in our examples. The order that the different elements are shown in is fairly standard: author(s) in the order they are presented (i.e., don’t alphabetise them); publication year; title (of the book or article); publisher (either the publishing house for books, or journal name for articles); volume number; page number. Depending on the type of source you are referencing, some of these fields may not be appropriate, or you might have to add different ones. For example, if you’re citing a web page you have to include the URL and the date you accessed the information. This is because web pages can be changed or removed at any time, so you can’t be sure the information will be there in the future exactly as you found it!
You may well be asking yourself, “why, if you said I should put the titles, are there no titles in these examples?”, which is a great question. It’s certainly a good practice to include them, and I recommend it for lab reports unless you’re instructed not to, but it’s also not strictly required if it’s the only paper or book this exact set of authors published in that year. If an author only published one book in a given year, the book can still be found without ambiguity or confusion arising. If they published two or more, though, the title may be the easiest way to distinguish between the two if both are quoted in the reference list. If you want to leave out the title to save space, you should first do a search to find out if the author published anything else in that year. If you don’t want to go to that much trouble, leave the title in.
So, when you’re checking your reference list over before you hand your report in, ask yourself if a random person – not someone connected with your lab sessions – would be able to find the source using the information you’ve given. If not, you’ll need to include a bit more information! And remember, there is a definite hierarchy in the sciences in which sources are considered reliable. Peer-reviewed articles in reputable journals are at the top, books are in the middle (because they’re not peer-reviewed, but at least stand in print), and the internet (especially Wikipedia) is right at the bottom. Try to use only reliable sources if you can, even if it takes a bit more effort. It’s good practice, and you’ll get more marks.
Writing style
Your lab report is a formal scientific document, so as long as you stick to a non-casual style of writing you should be fine. Leeway is generally given for the occasional spelling error or grammatical blooper at the level of undergraduate labs, as long as you express what you mean to say in a clear and concise way. This means finding the shortest possible way to communicate all of the required information. Of course, when I say “communicate”, I mean that this needs to be done in a way that the reader will understand what you mean.
Students very often struggle to find the right balance. They either use excessively complicated language to make it sound more “science-y”, and end up presenting a linguistic jungle for the lab helper to chop through, or go the other way and write something inappropriately casual (sometimes even including memes!) that would be more suited to a web article. The ultimate goal of scientific writing is to be simple to understand, and the purpose of your lab report is to demonstrate your understanding. So actually, you’ll be relieved to know there is an easy way to make your writing sound more science-y.
The first is to read through your writing and look for all the instances where you’ve used a word like “very”, or “really”, or “somewhat” (or any words like these). These are words we use that seem to add value, but don’t really, so you can usually up the science value of the sentence just by replacing these words with specific values. For instance, if I say in a report “Mars is not as big as Earth”, this is technically correct, but what do we mean by “big”? Are we talking in terms of the radius, or of the mass? What are the comparative sizes? In this case, being precise will help to clear up any questions the reader might have about what we mean to say. So, we could say instead “The mass of Mars is about 10% of Earth’s mass.” and that instantly lets the reader know we’re talking in terms of mass, not radius, and an approximate comparison.
What if you’re writing too much, or you’re over-complicating things? You’ve been agonising over your word choices, and your paragraphs are each half a page long, and when you ask your friend to read it…they can’t follow what you’ve written because of all your long, flowery, run-on sentences. Then you explain it to them in person, and they “get it” immediately. Why? Because in conversation we tend to use far plainer language. This is what you want to do for your report, since Scientific Writing is about being clear – not impressing your reader with how fancy you sound. So, any time you’re having trouble writing an explanation that makes sense, explain it out loud – whether to a willing vic friend, or just aloud to yourself. Where your verbal description differs from what you’ve written this is a good indicator that you haven’t used the clearest language you could have. Trimming some of the excess will simplify, and usually shorten, your writing considerably. After a while of practising this, it will become second nature and you will be able to write this way without having to think too hard about it. You may not realise it, but a beautifully straightforward report that makes sense is far more impressive to the reader.
Of course if you have the opposite problem, i.e., that of being a teeny bit too colloquial in your writing, you’ll need to try and smarten it up a bit. I have noticed that students with this problem tend to be quite vague as well, but getting a friend who didn’t do the experiment to read your report will usually help you to improve on that since they won’t know what you meant to say. The other thing you need to do is find all the cases where you’ve used idioms, sayings, pop culture references, jokes or anything like that. The easiest way is to think of one of your more serious, senior lecturers, and then try to imagine them reading your report out loud. If you’ve written something that would just sound…really weird (and/or hilarious)…if they were to say it, then you know you need to look at the wording again! Try to think about how one of your lecturers might phrase an explanation, and that should help you to approach a more formal style.
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