APPENDIX I-Notes on Lab Report Grades

All lab reports are to be recorded directly into the student's personal lab book. The student will photocopy the lab report directly from the lab notebook. Labs are due one week after the experiment is performed. Late labs will be given an automatic grade of 5 out of 10; labs that are not turned in by the second week will be given an automatic grade of 0. Labs may not be made up for the purposes of travel and so on. If you can manage to break your leg, well, that's another story. But laboratories, like exams, are a normal part of your academic commitments and cannot be rescheduled for convenience. Make travel plans around them.

title: 0 pts

Record the title of the experiment, the date the experiment was done, and the lab section number. Include also the name of your partners.

abstract: 10 pts

A very brief expression of what was done and the principal results. State numerical results with their uncertainties, using significant figures correctly. This will be the last thing that one does in completing the report.

apparatus: 10 pts

A brief description of the means by which the data were taken. Just a few sentences are needed to tell which instruments were used and to what end. In addition, include a sketch of the apparatus or a block diagram of the physical layout of the instruments.

theory: 30 pts

Explain in your own words the experimental measurements and the physical concepts and equations necessary to understand them. The idea of the experiment should be clear, and put in your own words. If equations are necessary to interpret the results, write down each equation and explain what it means or how it is used. Embed each each equation in the text and let it read like an phrase in English, for example, ``... the relation which allows us to calculate the electric field strength,

$$\vert\vec{E}\vert = - \frac{dV}{dx},$$

gives the field strength in terms of the spatial rate of change of the electric potential...''.

data and observations: 20 pts

Show, in tabular form, the data drawn from the measurements. All data entries are to have clarifying remarks above them, along with the definitions and units of the symbols used. Every table should be introduced by a simple declarative statement explaining the measurement which produced the data. Qualitative observations made during the time that the data were recorded should go here, and there should be a diagram depicting the measurement apparatus.

analysis: 30 pts

Answers to questions, graphs (correctly labeled) with a brief evaluations, calculations with a discussion of their relevance, comparisons of theory and experiment all belong to the analysis section. Final results and comparisons between theory and experiment should be presented here with stark clarity. Set the experimental value and it's theoretical counterpart side by side. Wherever required, the experimental uncertainty of a quantity (which limits the number of significant figures with which it may be reported) should be compared with the discrepancy, that is, the difference between the experimental and accepted value. One can only assess the significance of the discrepancy by comparing it with the uncertainty.