LAB NOTEBOOK FORMAT

Obtain an Avery model 43-684 Computation Notebook (or something like it: bound volume with cross-hatched paper for `easy plotting', to keep your notes in. Your labs will be graded based on the content of this notebook, so it is important that you communicate your work effectively to the grader. Yes, although the scores have to do with summary laboratory reports, it is expected that each student will keep a laboratory notebook. This will be the primary record from which your laboratory reports will be produced.

Good notebook skills will be essential to you as a practicing physicist, so it is important that you get in the habit of keeping good records early. The following requirements are designed to help you practice good scientific record-keeping skills, and to enhance your grade by communicating to the grader what you have done and how you obtained your results.

GENERAL FORMAT

All entries must be in ink . Cross out any mistakes with a single line.

Page 1: Title, your name and contact info, and your schedule for the term.
Page 2: Table of contents, filled in over the course of the term as you work.
Pages 3-end: Records of the work you have done for the lab session. Each lab should have its own section, formatted as described below.

Each page should begin with the date, the lab number you are working on, and where applicable, the session number. List your lab partner's name if you worked with someone else. For example:

"Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2011.                          SCST 290, Physics 480w, Session 2 (Lab Partners: Enrico Fermi, Ed Purcell)"

Leave a small space at the end of each page for the lab instructor to initial and date that page.

A page from a lab notebook, dated, clearly written in ink, and initialed and dated by a colleague not directly involved in the research is recognized by U.S. patent law as proof of discovery or invention. This kind of format, including initialization and dating by a colleague, is routinely followed by national and corporate research labs.

SECTIONS

Your report for each lab should be divided up into the following sections.

1. PRELAB NOTES, QUESTIONS TO PONDER, AND CALCULATIONS:

Record your first stabs at the `questions to ponder', calculations that they imply, and so forth.

2. THE RESEARCH QUESTION OF THE DAY:

Be specific and brief. A hypothetical example: "In this lab we plan to calibrate the sweep magnetic field values so that we can determine the the Zeeman energy gap resonance frequency as a function of the magnetic field. These measurements should help us determine the nuclear magnetic moment, I; how these measurements do this is worked out below...."

3. APPARATUS AND SETTINGS:

Sketch the apparatus, and describe the signal path where appropriate. Record every connection and setting in a clear and concise manner. This and the next section are the most important ones in your notebook. The information you record here must be complete enough and clear enough for one of your peers (i.e. one of your classmates who has not yet done the lab you are doing) to reproduce your results just from reading your notebook.

Your LAB INSTRUCTOR will sometimes check your work by checking to see whether there is enough detail to reproduce your results based on what you write in this section.

4. PROCEDURES AND RAW DATA:

This is your diary. Record your actions and results as they happen. Print out screenshots from the oscilloscopes and tape them into your notebook here as needed. Be quantitative wherever possible, and don’t forget units and error bars where appropriate. If you obtain unexpected results, try and find out why. Record any debugging you do.

Leave wrong results or mistakes in your lab book, crossed out with a single line.

Again, your LAB INSTRUCTOR will occasionally check your work to see if it leads to reproducible results.

If your result is wrong, but reproducible, you will still get partial credit! Irreproducible results, even if they are right, will earn little or no credit at all.

5. ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS:

If your raw data needs to be analyzed, do that here. Include any computer code that you use. Write one paragraph, at least, in conclusion, whether you needed to do any analysis or not. Did you see evidence for the effect you set out to observe? What was the value, with units and uncertainties, of the quantity you set out to measure? If your results did not agree with your expectations, as is sometimes the case, speculate on possible reasons.


shamelessly borrowed from the caltech senior lab course website