Lab Writing Guide

You will be judged in industry not on your work but on how well you communicate your work.

This course gives you practice in a common form of technical writing and in keeping a proper record of your work in a lab notebook. You’ll summarize each week’s activities in a brief memo. The basis of the memo is the information you record in your notebook while carrying out the experiments, simulations, and other group activities.

What follows are guidelines for lab notebooks and memos.

The Lab Notebook

A lab notebook is a permanent record of what you did, when you did it, and how you did it. Lab notebooks are frequently used by researchers to replicate each other’s work and as evidence when assigning priority for discoveries and inventions, so it’s important to keep a proper record of your work. Being able to keep a lab notebook following common conventions in science and industry is a useful skill.

In a professional lab, data and calculations for all experiments must be recorded in a dedicated notebook. The notebook often contains bound sheets of graph paper and remains in the laboratory between sessions. Scientists and engineers use the following conventions in keeping their notebooks:

Write in pen. If you make a mistake, cross it out neatly. Do not erase. Do not tear out sheets.
Reserve the first 2 pages for a Table of Contents. Update it every day.
Write the title of the experiment and the date at the top of each page.
Record your group members’ names for each experiment.
Always record raw data — the numbers you read from an instrument. Always.
Organize data in tables: one quantity per column, one set of measurements and calculations per row.
Include a list of the equipment you used, along with any identifying information.
Include sketches of equipment, circuit diagrams, and block diagrams of your experimental setup.
Calculate results in your notebook. Include a sample calculation.
Include graphs in your notebook. Make them neat, precise, and accurate. Label your axes.
Assign an error or uncertainty to your results. Use an appropriate number of significant figures.
Briefly describe your procedure and make notes to yourself so that you will have a good record later.

Don’t get lost in the details. Focus on the Big Picture: anyone who reads your notebook should be able to reproduce your work and understand your conclusions.

The Memo

Instead of writing a detailed lab report each week, you’ll write a short memorandum, or memo. This is a common form of communication in business, science, and industry.

Memos are written by all “knowledge workers.” They are most often designed to be used within the writer’s own company or organization. They may note the existence of a problem, propose some course of action, describe a procedure, or report the results of a test or an investigation. They are sometimes referred to as informal writing, which is not the same as sloppy, casual, or careless writing. A memo must be carefully prepared, thoughtfully written, and thoroughly proofread for errors.

— from A Survey of Industrial Mathematics by Charles R. MacCluer. Dover (2010). Pages 282–283.

A lab memo is a clear and concise report on your thoughts, work, observations, and conclusions. Communication is the goal. It should be an organized and coherent narrative of what you did and what you learned — after you’ve had a chance to reflect and make sense of it.

You’ll write one lab memo each week. When you finish gathering data and crunching the numbers, outline a short memo. Your memo should be typed, and it’s due 48 hours after your lab session ends. Add it to your portfolio. You may include tables, graphs, and other notes in the Discussion.

Memos follow a standard format. The one we’ll use for this lab is simple.

To:                 [Your Lab Instructor]
                     Department of Natural Sciences
                     Oregon Institute of Technology

From:                [Your Name], Research Assistant
                     [Your Lab Section]

Subject:             [The topic of the memo]

Date:                [Today's Date]

Foreword:


Summary:


Discussion:

The body of your memo should contain three sections:

Foreword: In one or two sentences, describe the problem under investigation. What was the goal of this week’s experiments? Provide a clear and concise overview. Focus on the Big Picture. Save the details for the summary.

Summary: In one or two paragraphs, briefly describe your hypotheses, summarize your procedure, and report your observations. Include numerical results — with appropriate units and significant figures — when relevant.

Discussion: Provide information that an interested reader might need to better understand your summary. A good discussion is at least one paragraph long and does at least one of the following:

Summarize and interpret graphs, drawings, or calculations.
Reflect on the lab. What did you find interesting? Tedious? Frustrating?
Describe technical challenges. What problems did you run into?
Assess your work. How confident are you in your numerical results? How did you quantify uncertainty?
Look ahead. If we were to study this topic further, what would be the next steps?
Describe special equipment you used for the first time.
Improve the lab. Is there a better way to do the experiments or the analyses?