Lab report guidelines

General stuff

• These guidelines are there to help improve the readability of your reports.
• Remember that your goal when writing a report, for any job or class, is to clearly
communicate the results and conclusions to your audience. If it is unclear to
your lab partner, it will be unclear to everybody else!
• Remember that you must write what you wish to say: the reader will not read
“what you meant to say” but “what you said”.
• Your lab reports should be fully typed.
• Sentences should be concise. One idea per sentence is plenty! If you have more
ideas, write more sentences. (Remember to keep them grammatically correct!)
• Any equations should be written in Equations Editor (or equivalent, if you do
not use Microsoft Word).

Figures

• Every figure needs to be labeled and numbered (under the figure).

• Every figure needs a title that describes succinctly the experiment.
• A short description with some detail may be added if needed.

Graphs

• Every graph needs to be labeled and numbered.

• Every graph needs a title that describes succinctly the experiment.
• The axis need to be labeled, with a variable name, a variable symbol (italicized),
and units (in parentheses or brackets).
• Vertical and horizontal gridlines must be used to help readability.

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• The axis’ ranges should be enough to fully encompass the data. White space
should be kept to a minimum.
• The legend needs to be formatted according to the variables and symbols used
in the graph.
• There should be no data-point markers on the graph, unless otherwise stated.
• The error bars must match the uncertainties of the values.
• The equations must use the correct variables (as per the axis), italicized. The
constant and coefficient should be written with units (if applicable, and in
brackets).

Tables

• Every table needs to be labeled and numbered (above the table).

• Every table needs a title that succinctly describes the experiment.
• Every column needs a variable name, a variable symbol (italicized) and units (in
parentheses or brackets). If you use the same scientific notation power for all
values, it should be placed here as well.
• If a column has only one value, the uncertainties and units must be placed
beside the value.
• If a column has more than one value, the units must be placed in the topmost
box which describes the column data.
• The values must be rounded to the appropriate number of significant figures,
when applicable.

Calculations

• Write down the equation of interest already solved (with only the variable of
interest on the left-hand side of the equation).
• Input numbers and solve for the unknown value, without uncertainties and
without units. Give more digits than needed.

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• Write down the uncertainty equation using variables only without showing
derivations.
• Input numbers and solve.
• Round absolute uncertainty to one SF.
• State final answer in a sentence with uncertainty, units, and correct SF.
NB: (1) To avoid round-off errors, carry extra SF during the calculations. (2) A lab
report is the only place where I need to see a sentence to state the answer of your
calculations!

On the next page follows an example of a professionally made figure and its
caption. This is only to give you an idea of how these captions can be powerful
tools. I only ask you do your best while writing.

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Examples
Example of figure from a research article (D. Laniel, G. Weck, P. Loubeyre,
Xe(N2)2 compound to 150 GPa: Reluctance to the formation of a xenon nitride, Physical
Review B 94, 174109 (2016)) reproduced with permission from author:

FIG. 2. Powder XRD pattern (λ = 0.4117 Å) obtained from a 6.6 mol % Xe mixture at 4.2 GPa
(decompressed from 5.2 GPa) superimposed with its Le Bail refinement. Even at this concentration,
three solid phases (SXe, β-N2, and Xe(N2)2) are observed. A cubic (Fd-3m) unit cell with a = 9.31 Å fits
well the diffraction lines of Xe(N2)2. The distance between the center of mass of the first-neighbor
N2-N2 molecules is 3.29 Å, whereas the shortest Xe-N2 distance is 3.86 Å. (Inset) Drawing of the
Laves phase Xe(N2)2 where the Xe atoms (orange spheres) and the spherically disordered N2
molecules (blue spheres) occupy the Mg (8a) and Cu (16d) sites, respectively.

The first sentence describes the experiment: the results of (1) an x-ray diffraction
experiment with (2) incident rays of a wavelength of 0.4117 angstrom (× 10-10 m),
(3) on a sample of 6.6 molar percentage of xenon, (4) at a pressure of 4.2
gigapascal which was reached by reducing the pressure from an initial value of 5.2
GPa, (5) with a quality assessment analysis.
The second and third sentences give more detail and observations on the
experiments performed and results obtained.
The fourth sentence (starting with “Inset”) gives a caption on the cubic
arrangement of atoms displayed on top of the figure. A short description allows the
reader to understand the schematic and reproduce it if desired.

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