Scientific Reports:
The following is an outline of the elements that should be included in your scientific reports. These
may be contained in a task/investigation sheet handed out or they may not. It is important that you
think about each of these elements for each experiment regardless of whether it is explicitly
included in an outline provided or not.
Title
The title should provide a description of what the experiment is testing, e.g: “The effect of
temperature on plant growth rates”
Aim (question to be answered)
The aim should outline the problem or question the experiment is being designed to answer or
solve. This is NOT the hypothesis, but rather the initiating question behind the experiment, e.g:
“does the temperature of the environment affect how fast a plant grows?”
Background/Research
This is where you provide a brief outline of the knowledge you have or have found out before the
experiment started. It is always good practice to do some research before an experiment so that you
can write an informed hypothesis and find out how best to investigate the question being asked. If
you have used resources for your research, it is important to reference them correctly.
Hypothesis
A testable statement, e.g: “Increasing the temperature of the environment will increase the rate of
growth of broad bean seedlings.”
Variables
Outline the variables. This should include your independent and dependent variables, as well as all
the variables you will control (keep the same).
Equipment
Your equipment list needs to be detailed so that someone could recreate your experiment exactly if
they wanted to. If you are using a specific make of thermometer to measure the temperature of the
environment, this needs to be included. If you are measuring the water to give the plants with a
certain size of measuring cylinder, this needs to be specified.
Method
This needs to be written in third person past tense in detail so that the experiment could be
recreated as exactly as possible.
Data/Results
These should be summarised in a table showing the data collected. This will ideally be shown in a
graph format as well, followed by a discussion of what the data/results indicate, or any outliers etc
that occurred.
Conclusion
This is where you state whether your hypothesis was supported or not supported by the results of
the experiment. A brief explanation of why it is either supported or not may be appropriate here.
Evaluation of experiment
This section should reflect any sources of error, anything you would change in future iterations of
the experiment (and why you would do this), as well as any future testing or hypotheses you might
think appropriate given the results and conclusion.