How to Write a Formal Lab Report

Title Page

Middle Centre of the Page

• Underlined descriptive LAB TITLE!

At the bottom right

• Your name

• Partner(s): name(s) of partner(s)

• The date of the lab

• Submitted to: teacher’s name

1. Introduction

Includes (in paragraph form):Question: What question is being addressed?•  In this lab the experimenters explored the

question………Hypothesis: What was your hypothesis?•  It was hypothesized that the…..Background Info: explain any concepts that

the reader needs to know to understand the lab

`2. Materials: List materials you used. You can also draw

and label a diagram of your setup (apparatus).

3. Procedure: What did the group do? Detailed, step by step, numbered.

1.The group began by… 2.Then the materials were… 3.Next the microscope was…

A. Never use words like: we, I, us, our, his, her, him, he.These are personal pronouns and are not appropriate in experimental reports.

B. Also, everything should be written in the past tense!

4. Results: charts, graphs, lists, or diagrams of any values collected.

Some possible observations are:• scientific diagrams• material mass or temperature measurements • time measurements • average value calculated

Remember:

Can be qualitative, or quantitative

All figures should have descriptive titles and labels!

5. Discussion :  Analyze the data. What did your data indicate? Did you notice any trends or relationships in your results?

You will also answer any questions that the teacher has assigned to you. These should be answered in paragraph form, not a question/answer format.

6. Conclusion: • Did the results support your hypothesis?• How would one change the experiment to make it more

accurate? (what are the sources of error)• How could one expand this experiment to study

something different, but related?

ex.The hypothesis was supported because…. If one were to do this experiment again another way one

could make it more accurate….  One way to change this experiment to discover something

new would be to….