1. Formal Lab Reports Prince Andrew High School

2. Title Page At the bottom right corner of the title page, include: Title Presented to Teacher’s name By Student’s name Partner Student’s name Date Class PAHS

3. Purpose This section tells the reader the objective of the lab activity. Ex: To determine the concentration of an unknown hydrochloric acid solution. Note:Do not include part of procedure in the purpose section.

4. Hypothesis A hypothesis is an educated guess based on previous knowledge of the concept explored in the lab activity. Note that it is not always possible to write a hypothesis. The teacher can let you know when it is appropriate to do so.

5. Introduction An introduction is a presentation of the theory covered during the lab activity. This section should help the reader get a better appreciation of the knowledge presented during the lab. It requires a certain amount of research and should be properly referenced. All mathematical formulas to be used in the lab analysis should be presented in this section with a thorough explanation of the variables involved. It is important to refrain from presenting procedure within this section.

6. Materials Since a lab sheet must be attached to the lab report, in this section it is only necessary to state: As per lab sheet If changes were made to the procedure during the lab and therefore a change in the materials’ list happened, these would need to be stated in this section.

7. Procedure Since a lab sheet must be attached to the lab report, in this section it is only necessary to state: As per lab sheet If changes were made to the procedure during the lab, these would need to be stated in this section.

8. Results Results from an experiment should always be presented in a data table format. Data tables should have proper headings and units indicated. Qualitative observations should always accompany Quantitative data. They can be added in a separate section under the data table.

9. Analysis An analysis consists of making sense of the data collected. In this section, you must include all mathematical work as well as graphing when appropriate. All work must be shown with proper units and significant digits. Proper graphing techniques must also be followed. Percent error should be calculated in this section.

10. Conclusion A conclusion consists of four very important parts. In the first part, the student must show that the purpose has been met. This is usually done by stating for example: “In this lab, we found the concentration of the hydrochloric acid solution to be _____ WITH A PERCENT ERROR OF ____.” The accepted value used to calculate % error should be properly referenced. Any researched physical or mathematical value used to comment on the validity of the results have to be properly referenced at all times.

11. Conclusion (cont) Evaluation In this section of the conclusion, you must evaluate what possible errors could have contributed to the lack of success of your experiment or the lack of correlation between your obtained values and the referenced values. Separate your errors into systematic and random errors. Comment on the impact or significance of these errors on the results obtained in the lab.

12. Conclusion (cont) Modifications In the final section of the conclusion, you are asked to propose modifications to the lab which would improve the errors identified in the second section. Make sure to propose modifications which will directly improve the lab performance and make sure to address everyone of the errors stated in your evaluation section.

13. References Please follow APA style for your reference section. Resource materials are available to you if you need help in this section.

14. Additional Questions For certain laboratory activities, it is possible that the teacher will supply you with additional questions which will test your understanding of the materials studied during the lab activity. Make sure to answer these questions using complete sentences.