PHYS 4012L Advanced Lab II Spring 08
Advanced Laboratory Lab Notebooks
Your lab notebook should be a notebook with attached pages, not a loose-leaf notebook. Even "messed up" pages should be left in the notebook.
The purpose of the notebook is as a record of your activities in the lab. You should have your own notebook; each person in the group should have a complete record. Anything that you do or observe should be written-- in ink-- in your notebook. Some specific things to be included are:
A title or short description of the experiment and the date of the experiment
A statement of purpose for the experiment
Descriptions and/or sketches of the apparatus
Descriptions of what was done and how it was done
A record of all measurements. Do not write them on scratch paper first and then copy them into the notebook.
Descriptions and examples of the calculations done with the data
The final result(s), clearly labeled as such
Any graphs needed for the experiment. If these are done on a computer or graph paper, they should be taped into your notebook.
Conclusions (if any are required)
For some experiments a formal lab report will be required. All of the needed information should be available in your notebook. It should be possible for you or another student to use your notebook in the future to repeat the experiment.
Advanced Laboratory Lab Report Format
This report is to be typed and prepared in the style recommended by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) for AIP publications. Good examples of this are the American Journal of Physics or The Physical Review. It is important that you look carefully at the way tables, figures, and equations are included within the body of a paper and how they are referred to within the text. Your reports will vary in length from a few pages to perhaps more than 10 pages. A concise summary of relevant material is far more desirable than an exhaustive and wordy treatise.
The formal report has seven components:
1. Title of experiment and authors' names.
2. Abstract. Briefly describe the experiment including any central results. The abstract should not exceed four or five sentences. The abstract should be on the cover page of your laboratory report along with the title of the experiment and the names of the persons submitting the report.
3. Introduction. Motivate the experiment and give a concise summary of the physics involved, including any mathematical detail relevant to later discussion in the report.
4. Procedure. Describe the experimental method and discuss how systematic and statistical errors were determined and minimized. Include a careful drawing of relevant parts of the experimental apparatus and a block diagram of any electronic components used.
5. Results. Present your raw data and explain how it was transformed to meaningful physical quantities. Present all essential results in both tabular and graphical form. Remember that all tables must have titles and all figures must have brief captions.
6. Conclusion. Discuss your final results and what physics one can learn from them. Suggest improvements in experimental method.
7. References. If you use any textbooks, reference books or journals in some way while writing up your lab report, cite them in the text of your report and include a bibliography at the end.
The report must include a full evaluation of possible systematic and random uncertainties. Remember that the evaluation of the uncertainty in a result is at least as important as the result itself. The reports will be due on dates announced in lab. If turned in on time, the reports will be corrected and returned to you for revisions before a grade is assigned. This process may be repeated if time permits.
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