Writing for Physics: The Laboratory Report

Reading maketh a full man;
conference a ready man;
and writing an exact man.

~ Francis Bacon

Laboratory courses are challenging on many levels. We are trying to familiarize students with equipment at the same time that they are to connect the uses of that equipment to the theoretical physics that they are learning. Add onto that mix that they need to  express in writing their understanding of their findings, and the task seems formidable.

Most students do not know how to write well, and for the instructor, not only is writing complicated and time consuming to teach, lab reports are tedious to grade, especially badly written lab reports.

This book breaks the laboratory report into its constituent components and helps you, the instructor, to teach one section of the laboratory report every week, culminating in one full laboratory report at the end of the semester.  Each week after the students have completed the laboratory exercise, this book provides sequential writing exercises, week by week, to take students through all sections of the physics laboratory report in the following sequence

Week 1 : what is a laboratory report
Week 2: writing in science speak
Week 3: writing the introduction to the laboratory report
Week 4: writing the materials and methods section 9
Week 5: constructing tables and graphs/figures
Week 6: writing up your results
Week 7: writing discussion and conclusion section
Week 8: constructing a title and writing an abstract
Week 9: constructing a reference list
Week 10: Putting it all together – writing a complete laboratory report.