Title first word starts with a capital Your name and (if joint) partner name Your student number and partner’s number Department of Physics and Astronomy The University of Manchester First/Second/Third Year Laboratory Report October 2019 (For an individual report:) This experiment was performed in collaboration with partner name and number. Abstract Insert your abstract here. Remember to delete the original text. The abstract should be about 50 โ 200 words, and give a very brief overview of the experiment and main results. Abstracts are important [1] because they set the tone for the rest of the document. If your abstract includes a reference citation then give the source below the abstract. This ensures that the abstract is selfcontained. Do not change the fonts or format of this Title Page, which is not numbered. The rest of your report should start on the next page, page 2. [1] Chicago Manual of Style, https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html, accessed 17/10/2018 1. Introduction This document serves several purposes. a) It is a template that defines our House Style. b) It contains instructions, advice and guidance on writing lab reports. c) It contains examples on the use of Microsoft Word. Your lab report should conform to the appearance of the House Style. The easiest way to do this is to write your report by editing this document, or the stripped down version which is also available on Blackboard. You may prefer to use a different document preparation package, such as LaTeX, to produce your report. In that case, it is your responsibility to ensure that the final version which you submit is consistent with the House Style defined here. In first year, the report marking scheme includes marks for various specific points of House Style. In second and third years, the marking scheme concentrates more on the overall content and writing style but you are still expected to follow the House Style, and will not be marked down for presentation if you follow it. Do not change the style, i.e. the fonts, spacing, layout etc. It’s a good idea to keep an unchanged copy of this document for reference. 2. The aim of a scientific report The basic aim of the report is to communicate your results to the scientific world and to convince the reader (often a sceptical critical reader) that they should believe your results. You should include all measured and propagated uncertainties and also details of any best-fit models you use. Your result may be a numerical value (for instance the acceleration due to gravity) or it may be an observation of a physical phenomenon (for instance the form of the diffraction pattern produced when light passes through a slit). The key to good communication is to write clearly, concisely and precisely, and to follow the conventions for a scientific report so that your reader finds the report easy to read and understand. This document contains a lot of information and guidance on the required structure, layout and presentation of your report. Books such as [2;ch13] contain more general advice on good scientific writing. 2.1. Report length First year lab reports should be no longer than 9 pages in total. You will lose marks if your report is longer than this. Typical reports are 7-8 pages long, with a word count of around 1500. If your does not include sufficient material or explanation, and is therefore too short, you may also lose marks. This House Style guide is over 20 pages long so your report should be much shorter than this document. 3. House style: layout and presentation This document specifies, by example, the House Style for Department of Physics and Astronomy first year laboratory reports. The idea is to make the 2 report look like an article in a scientific journal. In the real world, when you write an article for a journal, e.g. Physical Review A, the style is rigidly specified [3], giving the journal a look that people come to recognise. Using the House Style saves you work because you do not have to invent your own. It specifies the format, styles and layout, including margin sizes, line spacing, font types and sizes for headings and body text, how to make a reference etc. None of these should be changed. Notice it is (nearly) all in one font. There is no underlining. Your report should be written in Arial font, 12pt for normal text, with section and subsection headings in bold. Paragraphs should be justified (aligned) both sides, with single line spacing. There is an extra 18pt space before a section heading and 12pt after. The Word Heading 2 style is used for section headings, and these should be numbered automatically, but you should make and number subsection headings (Heading 3 style in this document) yourself. Any variations from the standard format should follow the example set in this document, for example with mathematics and displayed equations, the front page, and figure captions. Appendix A contains a useful checklist of House Style items. Check your finished report against this list to ensure that the layout and presentation conform to the House Style. 3.1. Using this document as a template The easiest way to create your report is to open a copy of this document and edit it. You can copy and paste features like Greek letters, subscripts, equations and so on. At the end make sure you delete all the material of the original document. This should leave your report in the required House Style and looking very professional. 3.2. Other ways to improve your presentation Always use two spaces after a full stop so that the inter-sentence space is wider than inter-word spaces. A hard space between two characters will ensure that the line does not break at the space. This is very useful to avoid splitting a value and its units of measurement across a line break if the number appears at the end of the line. To make a hard space use CTRL+SHIFT and space. Turn on ‘Show all nonprinting characters’ (the ¶ symbol in the Paragraph section of the main Home toolbar) to see where all your spaces are. Make sure your figures are large enough to see the information clearly. Avoid text wrapping around narrow figures or tables, and make sure that the caption sits directly below the figure or table, on the same page. 4. Structure of a Lab Report The first page of your lab report is the Title Page, which contains information about the author and the report, and also the Abstract. The main body of the report is sub-divided into sections and if necessary, subsections. The format of the headings is given by the examples in this document. Section 1 of your report will be the Introduction, and the last numbered section will be the Summary section. This is followed by the reference list. The main body of the report will usually include sections on the Experimental method, 3 Theory, Data, Analysis, Results, and Discussion. You can choose the order of the sections in the main body of the report, e.g. Theory then Method, and you may also want to combine sections, e.g. Data and Analysis or Results and Discussion, or add other sections. You are encouraged to use more informative titles for all of these sections. Appendix B contains more information about the structure and content of each of the sections in your report. 4.1. Experiments which have more than one part A common problem is how to report an experiment that consisted of several parts. For instance you might have used a Michelson interferometer to measure the wavelength of a spectral line and then measured the splitting of a line and then studied the bandwidth of a filter. It is really tedious to be presented with the theory (for each part) then the apparatus (for each part) then the measurements (for each part) then the results (for each part) then the errors (for each part) then the summary (for each part). It is far better to consider all aspects (theory, apparatus, measurements, accuracy, results, etc) of part one, (the wavelength) then all aspects of part two (the splitting) then part three. If the method section for part 2 is essentially the same as for part 1, except that you varied the current rather than the resistance, then your report will be more concise, and therefore easier to read, if you refer the reader back to the description in part 1 rather than rewriting (repeating) a large chunk of text. When your report covers several parts of an experiment in this way you should still have a single introduction at the start or your report and a final summary section at the end which pulls together the main results from each part of the experiment. 5. Scientific Writing Style Your report should convey to the reader, clearly and concisely, an account of what you did and what you found out. The key to writing clearly is to keep things simple; write short sentences and, where there is a choice, use simple words. Avoid repetition, particularly repetition of ideas and concepts, although you will need to repeat some pieces of key information such as your final results several times during the report. Your lab book should contain a full record, in time order, of what you did during the experiment. However, your lab report should be an edited version of the story of the experiment, suitable for publication. This means that you can rearrange the order in which you present your work to make the story of the experiment as clear and easy to follow as possible. You should assume that your reader is another first year student, but one who has not necessarily completed this experiment. They should have the same core physics knowledge as you, but may not be familiar with the details of the physics involved here. You are telling the story of what you did, so it is normally a good idea to keep your report in past tense. There are a couple of exceptions to this, the Theory section is describing work which was and (hopefully) still is true, so is normally 4 written in present tense. Figure and Table captions describe what the figure or table shows and so again are normally written in present tense. Historically, scientific papers were written in the passive voice, however, many journals no longer insist on this style of writing, and you can make use of both the passive voice (e.g. measurements were made …) and the active voice (we concluded …). Both are fine and use them as needed, however, remember that the emphasis in a report is on the scientific result and not the particular individuals, so avoid excessive use of “I” or “we”. Of course, every part of the text must be written in grammatically correct English sentences and there should be no spelling mistakes. You should not give instructions, and you should avoid lists (unlike this document which gives instructions and has several lists). Appendix C contains more advice about writing clearly, concisely and precisely. 6. Some technical details 6.1. Units All quantities must have their units stated, as in: 9.81 msโ2. Notice that there is a space before the units and the units are in the same font style as the main text (upright or roman type rather than italic). To avoid the number and the units ending up on separate lines use a hard space (shift-crtl-space). Other unwanted linebreaks can be avoided in a similar way. Note that using a minus sign (not a hyphen, see Section 3.2) in ms−2, will stop the units superscript being broken across a line. 6.2. Uncertainties It is important to discuss the uncertainties in raw measurements and results. Uncertainties should be presented alongside the values they qualify. For instance, state the precision of the equipment when you describe it, give the uncertainty of the measurements when you describe them and give the uncertainty of results as they are presented. Points on graphs should always be plotted with error bars. If these are too small to see clearly then say so in the caption. There is no need to have a section dedicated to errors. You have a delicate balance to strike. You can assume that the reader knows the basics of error propagation so there is no need to spell out the formulae and arithmetical calculations in detail, yet you need to convince a sceptical reader that you have done things properly. For instance it is adequate, and indeed good style, to say “The current and voltage were measured to an accuracy of 1.5% and 2.5% respectively. Combining in quadrature, this gives the power, ๐ = ๐ผ๐, to 2.9%”. Any competent physicist can check that 1.5 and 2.5 do indeed combine in quadrature to give 2.9. However, leaving out the equation in examples similar to the one above would not be appropriate, since the reader might not know that ๐ = ๐ผ๐ is the correct equation. Similarly, if you have not mentioned that current was measured to 1.5% then the reader can’t verify your final result. It is useful to explain what the dominant source of uncertainty is in the final result. 5 6.3. Rounding Remember to round numerical values and uncertainties to a sensible number of significant figures. An abstract claiming that your result for the acceleration due to gravity was 9.8 ๏ฑ 0.015643 would lose marks (not only because there are too many significant figures in the uncertainty, but also there are no units). If you present values in a table, these should also be rounded sensibly. Refer to the Data Analysis course notes and summary sheet (available on Blackboard) if you are not sure about how to quote your values and uncertainties. As a general rule of thumb, round the uncertainty to one, or possibly two significant figures and round the value to the same placeholder level. 6.4. Algebraic symbols and equations Use an italic font for algebraic symbols. This distinguishes them from units of measurement. Usually equations are displayed on a separate line, even though they are part of a sentence. Try to avoid using words (or abbreviations) as algebraic symbols or as subscripts or superscripts. Note that mathematical functions such as sin, cos or log are written in roman type. Appendix D gives more information about how to include equations and mathematical symbols in your report. 6.5. Footnotes and Appendices The best advice about footnotes and appendices is to avoid them as much as possible. Put useful information in the text. Put references in the list of references at the end. Lab reports are too short to justify an appendix at the end (unlike this template). If some calculation or derivation or detail really is needed and does not fit comfortably into the main text then a short appendix might be appropriate. It is not usually necessary to include tables of raw data in your report, or in an appendix. 7. Figures, Tables and Graphs Your report should include figures, and may also include tables. These are not part of the main text, but give the reader useful additional information. Graphs, plots, diagrams and other types of pictorial output are all labelled as figures. Each figure or table should have a number and a caption, (e.g. Figure 1), and should be referred to, from the main text, by its number. See this document for examples. Captions are not merely a title, they should state clearly what the figure or table shows, and can also give supplementary information, such as the parameters of a best fit model. They should be written in sentences. Make sure that the information in the caption is specific to the figure or table, and avoid putting detailed descriptions of methods or analysis in the caption. This should be in the main text. You can also repeat key information from the caption in the main text. 6 A B laser Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the Michelson interferometer, showing the laser source, beam splitter, and mirrors A and B. The light path is also indicated. Mirror A is movable using a micrometer screw gauge and a reduction mechanism. Mirror B has fine adjustments for alignment. Use one numbering sequence for figures (Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3 etc) and one sequence for tables (Table 1, Table 2 etc), as in this document. The caption is in a smaller font that the main text (Arial 10 point) and should be the same width as the normal text, even if the figure or table is narrower. 7.1. Creating Figures Figures should be neat and clear. They can be produced on a computer or hand-drawn and then scanned or photographed. If you create a figure by hand, make sure that lines are straight, writing is neat and legible, axes are orthogonal and the quality of the scan or photograph is of publishable standard. If your figure contains output from a computer program you should check that all of the annotations are readable, and remove any unnecessary or distracting information from the computer output. Annotations should be at least 10pt to be easily readable. You should avoid using photographs of equipment. A diagram showing the key features, such as the one shown in Figure 1, is usually much clearer for the reader. If you copy a figure or diagram from another source, you must cite the source in the figure caption, otherwise you could be committing plagiarism. If you use a figure taken from the labscript or pre-lab you should include an acknowledgement in the figure caption. An example is shown in Figure 2. 7 Figure 2. A diagram showing the parts of the pendulum and the relevant distances between the knife edges and the centre of mass. Reproduced with permission from the Kater’s Pendulum pre-lab. 7.2. Tables Tables are a very useful way of summarising the results from several different measurements, so make good use of them. It is not usually necessary to give tables containing lots of raw measurements; in most cases it is much better to present data as a graph. To make a table select: Insert, Table…, and specify the number of rows and columns that you want. Table 1 is a simple example of some artificially generated data. Notice that the table has a number and an informative caption, and is referred to specifically by its number from the main text. The uncertainty on current and magnetic field have been omitted in Table 1, but must be there in your version, either in the table itself or mentioned in the caption or the main text, for example: the current was set with a precision of ±2% and the magnetic field was measured to ±0.02 T. Current (Amps) 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 Magnetic Field (Tesla) 0.23 0.46 0.66 0.87 1.06 1.27 B2 (Tesla2) 0.053 0.212 0.436 0.757 1.124 1.613 Height of meniscus (mm) 3.24 3.41 3.60 3.97 4.32 4.81 Table 1. Height of the meniscus for different magnetic fields. The heights, measured with a microscope, are accurate to 0.02 mm. Note that all the numbers have been rounded sensibly where appropriate. Also notice the way in which the reference is used (see Section 8). 7.3. Graphs Graphs are worth a thousand words for presenting data to a reader. We are much better at digesting visual data than a table of numbers or a lot of detail explained in the text. So it is rare for reports of experimental work to not include some graphs. Data points should always be shown with their error bars (or a note in the caption if these are too small to be seen). Your graph must have numbered and labelled axes. Remove unnecessary material such as plots of residuals, the fitted parameters, computer instructions etc. Display only the 8 essentials and don’t distract the reader with side issues. If necessary, crop or edit the plot. For example, if the axes annotations are too small to read comfortably, copy the plot into Powerpoint or Paint, cover the annotations with blank boxes and re-type the values in a larger font. You will almost certainly want to include a plot of your data together with the best fit model as given by lsfr.py. An example of such a plot is shown in Figure 3. Remember that you can change the way the plot looks using the options in the main lsfr window. In particular it is a good idea to make the xaxis slightly wider so that the extreme points are clearly visible. Many students find it difficult to write a good caption for figures showing the results of a least-squares fit. Remember that the caption needs to state clearly what the figure shows, in this case the data points and the best fit line. You should also give the values of the best-fit parameters (๐, ๐ and ๏ฃ2 ) rounded sensibly, and you may well also want to refer back to the equation for the model, by its number. Finally, you may want to highlight any particular or unusual features in the plot which you will then discuss further in the main text. Height (mm) Height vs square of B-field 4.5 4 3.5 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 Square of B-field (T2) equation: Linearof(y=mx+c) Figure 3. Fitted This is an example a graphic produced with lsfr.py. It shows the data from Table 1 and also the least squares best fit straight line which has a ๏ฃ2 of 2.98 for 4 degrees of freedom. m = 1.0087 0.0151 The line has slope ๐ = (33 ±๏ฑ 3) mm T−2 and intercept๏ฃ2๐ ==2.984 (4 ± 2) mm. c = 3.18642 ๏ฑ 0.00816 Number pointsparts: plotted(a) = 6 the graph The graphical output from lsfr.py normally consists of ofthree Degrees of freedom = 4and ๏ฃ2 and (c) as shown in Figure 3, (b) a table of the fitted parameters, errors a graph of the deviations. For your report, it is the main graph which is most Deviations in the ordinates important, so you should crop out the other parts of the output when you include 0.05 the image. You can either set lsfr.py only to output the main plot, or when you copy the0graphic into Word, crop the image. This is done by right-clicking on the graphic, >Format Picture, Crop and adjusting the Crop position. (If you click -0.05 on this graphic in Word you can reset it and see the original.) 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 If the residuals plot is of particular interest, for example the residuals show a non-random structure which you discuss in the main text, you may also want to show that plot as a separate figure, although often such a pattern will already be visible in the main plot. 9 7.4. Combining Plots You may have several similar plots of data and fits. It is usually better to combine these into a single plot for your report. This will help your presentation to be clearer and more concise. You can do this in python: first, plot each dataset using plt.errplot, then create a set of y-values for each best fit straight line and plot these against the x-values using plt.plot. Finally do a plt.show() to display all the plots together. An alternative is to show one or two example plots and then summarise the results from all your experiments in one table. 8. Plagiarism and References It is very important in your professional life that you distinguish clearly between your own work and that of other people. In lab reports, and published academic papers, we do this by citing references where we use ideas, results or other work which is not our own. If you do not cite your sources properly then you are at risk of committing plagiarism or other related academic malpractices and the consequences can be very severe. A plagiarism check is run on each submitted report. The Lab Report talk in Study Week contains a lot of information about plagiarism and how to avoid it. You can find the slides from the talk on the First Year Blackboard web pages under the Lab Reports Folder. You will also find links to further resources there. All reports should have some references. References consist of two related parts, a citation in the text and the details of the source at the end of the report. You can use one of two reference styles: either author-date, where the citation in the text reads, e.g. “(Einstein 1905)”, or the IEEE numerical system (as used in this template) where the citation is a number in square brackets, in line with the text (not superscripted). In the text, for example, you may refer to a book as in [2] or [4]. You can also refer to a specific page in a book using [4;p23] and later [4;p45]. Each source is then listed in the References section (which is not numbered), at the end of your report. Your reference list should contain the full details of each source, so that the reader can easily look up the relevant material. For each source, you should give the author name(s), date of publication, page or section number, the title of the book or journal and for books, the name of the publisher. For Author-date style, the references should be listed alphabetically by the first author’s last name; for IEEE they should be in numerical order. You should use the style given in this document to make sure that you include all of the necessary information. You can find more examples of referencing in any published papers, such as the one by Lyne and Lorimer [5]. 8.1 Appropriate reference sources A good reference source should be trustworthy, academically rigorous and publically available for anyone to look up. The lab script and pre-lab are not usually good reference sources to use, because these are not published and freely available documents, however, if you are giving the value of an instrumental parameter or similar information 10 which cannot be found elsewhere, then you should acknowledge the lab script. Similarly, if you received a relevant piece of information from a person you can reference and acknowledge them like this: “A good technique [6] for measuring……”. Be careful if you are using references to sources on the web. You should give the full web address (not a search engine link) in the reference list and also the date you accessed the page. Web pages can be updated or removed, so your source may change after you accessed it. For this reason you should usually try to use books and journal papers rather than web sources where possible. If you do use a web source you should take care that the website is reliable. Usually a national scientific institution such as the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) [7] or a respected higher education establishment would be a better choice than a site like ScienceKids [8], which is aimed at a lower level. Wikipedia can be a good starting point for researching and understanding a topic or concept, however, it is not necessarily reliable and it changes frequently. Therefore for a document such as a lab report, Wikipedia and other similar encyclopaedia sources such as Britannica are not considered to be as reliable and appropriate a source as, for example, a textbook or published research paper would be. If you choose to use or reproduce a figure from a Wikipedia page you should include a citation to that page in the caption. When marking your lab report, your marker will be looking for appropriate reference sources with full citations in the appropriate format. It is not appropriate to have a Bibliography in your lab report. The term Bibliography is used for a list of books and papers which are of general interest and which are not referenced individually. Bibliographies are used in more general articles such as a vacation essay, or in much longer works which draw generally on a wide variety of sources. 9. Proof-reading and editing your report Writing a report or other document in a specified format is an important professional skill. You should always make time to proof-read and edit your report. It is a good idea to save a completed draft version and come back to it a day (or more) later so that you can read the entire report with fresh eyes. This will help you to spot any typos or errors in the layout and presentation of your report. Try reading your report out loud to yourself. You can often identify sentences or sections where the report does not flow clearly or logically, or where your explanations are becoming vague or repetitive in this way. Here is a short checklist that’s worth going through when you’re adding the final touches to your report. ๏ท Delete all the original text of this document. ๏ท Read your report. ๏ท Get a friend to read it. Read someone else’s. ๏ท Does the report conform with the House Style for layout and presentation? (See checklist in Appendix A.) ๏ท All values and uncertainties have been rounded sensibly. ๏ท All figures and tables been referred to, by their numbers, from the main text. 11 ๏ท Correct spelling mistakes and other typos. ๏ท No repetition. No unnecessary words. No ambiguities. ๏ท Have you dealt with errors adequately? ๏ท Run a Spell Checker. When you are happy with your report, make a pdf version and submit the pdf copy, following the instructions under Lab Reports on the Blackboard lab pages. 10. Feedback and assessment Your report will be marked according to the marking scheme available on Blackboard. More important than the mark is the personal feedback you will get from the marker. Consider all of your feedback carefully. Some of it will relate to things which are obviously right or wrong, and some will be more subjective, relating to your particular technical writing style. You may or may not agree with the marker about the subjective feedback but by considering it carefully you will develop your own writing style. In first year, the marking scheme is very prescriptive. The emphasis is on following the House Style, as defined in this document. The marker will try to ignore how well you actually did the experiment because this was previously assessed in the interview. As well as your numerical mark, your marker will also give you feedback based on their opinion of your report as a whole: considering how well it stands up as a scientific document, and how well it communicates the results of your experiment to a reader. In second year and beyond, the report marking scheme is less prescriptive and puts more emphasis on the overall quality of your technical writing. You might like to bear in mind that by far the most common comment made by markers is that students seem to have not read the guidance and instructions. So read this document carefully and take note. 10.1. Report Length Your report must be no longer than 9 pages, including the front page and all report content such as figures and references. You may also have a Personal Comments page at the end of your report but this is not included in the page count. Typically a lab report should have around 1500 words, and usually anything between 1200 and 2000 words is reasonable. You can estimate the word count in Word by copying the word count line below, and updating the number of words, by putting the cursor on the number (it becomes highlighted in grey), and pressing F9. The number of words in this document is 8885. If your report is longer than 9 pages then you will lose marks. Note that for a first year lab report, it is not necessary to include everything that you did. However, the report should tell a complete story to a reader who has not done the experiment themselves. Your report must contain sufficient material; usually this means a description of at least one experiment (not just a preliminary measurement), including relevant theory, the method and measurements made, a discussion of your analysis and results and any conclusions you can draw. 12 10.2. Late Reports Working to a deadline is an important transferable skill. The University has strict penalties for late submissions of coursework and these will apply to late lab reports. Any report handed in after the deadline will be marked as usual but then a late penalty mark will be deducted. The late penalty will be equivalent to 10% of the total possible mark for each day late, but if the report is more than 5 days late a mark of 0 will be recorded. 10.3. Work and Attendance requirement It is a work and attendance requirement that each student submit an individually written lab report and you will not pass first year lab unless you do this. For most students, the final report you submit in first year will be an individual report, so you will satisfy this requirement as part of your normal lab work. If you do not submit an individual report during the year, whether due to illness or any other reason, you will be asked to submit a report at the end of the year (after the exams), in order to satisfy this requirement. Acknowledgments There is usually no need for acknowledgements in your report, but if you want to, you can include an (un-numbered) acknowledgments section at the end, before the references. I’d like to thank all those students whose reports I have read in recent years and thus obtained some knowledge, albeit limited, of the difficulties of writing laboratory reports. I’d also like to thank the many demonstrators I have had discussions with about lab report writing and marking, some for agreeing with me and some for opening my eyes to different approaches. References [1] Chicago Manual of Style, https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html, accessed 17/10/2018 [2] Squires, G. L. 2001. Practical Physics, 4th Ed, Cambridge University Press. [3] Style and Notation Guide for Physical Review/Physical Review Letters https://cdn.journals.aps.org/files/styleguide-pr.pdf, accessed 27/10/2018. [4] Kaye, G. W. C. and Laby, T. H. 1995. Tables of Physical and Chemical Constants, 16th ed., Longman. [5] Lyne, A. & Lorimer, D. 1994. Nature, 369, 127. [6] Cunane, P. Private communication. [7] The National Physical Laboratory, http://www.npl.co.uk/, accessed 28/10/2015. [8] ScienceKids, http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/ , accessed 28/10/2015. The number of words in this document is 8967 . 13 Personal Comments Comments such as “I enjoyed the experiment”, “I think this is a good experiment because…”, and any such personal opinions are not part of a scientific report and must not be included in your report. However, you may, if you wish, place at the end of your report a separate page entitled “Personal Comments”, which will not be marked. Relevant information might be that you have been working without a partner which meant you found some aspect of your work more difficult to do as you were working on your own. You can also ask the marker for feedback on specific points such as “I was unsure about Section 3; is it too long?”, “I didn’t know whether or not to include xxx”, etc or make any comment you like. We hope that this will help to provide useful feedback for you. Dr Myfanwy Lloyd 24/10/2019. Based on the original Lab Report Template by Dr Ian Duerdoth. Please send comments and corrections to: Dr Myfanwy Lloyd First Year Lab Tutor email: Myfanwy.Lloyd@manchester.ac.uk 14 Appendix A: Layout, presentation and house style Before you submit your report, check that the layout and presentation conforms with the House Style. The following list, which is not necessarily complete, can be used as a handy checklist. Your report should have the same general appearance as this document. ๏ท Front Page: title and author details as specified ๏ท Front Page: abstract title is not numbered ๏ท Abstract is justified (aligned) both sides ๏ท Each page is numbered, except for the Front Page ๏ท Correct font and numbering style used for all section and subsection titles ๏ท Main text is justified (aligned) both sides throughout ๏ท Section or subsection titles are not left hanging at the bottom of a page ๏ท Roman type used for main text and units of measurement ๏ท Maths (equation editor) font used for algebraic symbols and equations ๏ท Roman type used for mathematical functions such as ln, sin ๏ท Units of measurement are always given, separated by a space from the value (with its uncertainty) and on the same line. Use a hard space if necessary to enforce this ๏ท All values and uncertainties are rounded sensibly ๏ท Figure and Table numbering style follows House Style ๏ท Captions in the correct font and specified numbering style ๏ท Captions are directly below figures or tables and on the same page ๏ท No text wrapping around figures or tables ๏ท Equation numbering follows House Style ๏ท Referencing style is consistent and follows one of the two allowed styles ๏ท Reference section is not numbered Appendix B: Content of each section There are some aspects of the content and organisation of your report which should follow standard conventions for a scientific paper. In other areas, particularly the structure of the main body of the report, you have more freedom to organise and section the material in the way you think best to tell your story clearly and concisely. B.1. The title page The layout of the Title Page is fixed by the House Style. It consists of the Title, Author(s), Institution, Function, Date, (partner, if appropriate) and the Abstract. The spacing and font sizes are specified by the first page of this template. Note that the title page does not have a page number, but the other pages should be numbered. The second page is page number 2. The title should be short and informative. Capitalise the first letter of the first word only and avoid abbreviations and jargon. The title information should all be centred but the Abstract should be justified (aligned) on both sides. 15 B.2. About abstracts Every report must have an abstract, which for a lab report should be about 50 to 200 words long. It should consist of a clear, concise and precise description of the experiment and the key findings. If there are a few key numerical results then these should be stated with their uncertainties. Try to avoid symbols or equations as these take time to define and are rarely beneficial. Do not use tables or graphics. Avoid material requiring referencing; if it is essential, then the reference should appear on a new line at the end of the abstract rather than in the reference section at the end of the report. If the same reference is used in the report proper, then it should also be listed in the reference section. The purpose of the abstract is to allow someone to decide whether to read the complete report, and as such an abstract should always be independent of the report; nothing should be in the abstract that is not in the report, and all major elements of the report should be represented in the abstract. B.2.1. Example of a good abstract The acceleration due to gravity (at Manchester) was determined using a Kater’s pendulum. The pendulum used was a rigid pendulum with two parallel knifeedges that defined the axes of rotation and its length. The final result was 9.814 ๏ฑ 0.002 ms-2. The accuracy was limited by the measurement of the length of the pendulum. B.3. The main body of the report The main body of your report should begin with an Introduction section, and end with a Summary section (sometimes called a Conclusions section). In between you can choose how to order your material, but typically you will include the experimental layout and method, the underlying theory, your measurements and data analysis, leading to your final results, and a discussion of these results. You can choose your own section and subsection titles and you should try to make these as informative as possible. Every section and subsection must contain normal text and may also contain figures and/or tables. Each figure or table must be referred to, by its number, from the main text and the text should highlight or discuss the main points which the reader should take from the figure or table. See Section 6 for examples. B.3.1. The introduction The introduction should introduce the reader to the report and the experiment. To do this it should provide any necessary background or context to the experiment; this may include brief historical information or notable previous work. As in all sections you should cite references to support factual claims other than your own results. We will be more impressed by citations of the original historic papers than by citations of textbooks, and more impressed by textbooks than by web pages. It is usually a good idea to conclude the Introduction with a description of the main desired outcomes of the experiment, any practical applications, and any other notable elements of the experiment not sufficiently technical for the main body of the report. It should not be a summary of the experiment. The introduction is likely to contain most of your references. 16 B.3.2. Theory section Most reports will contain a section which describes the theory relevant to the experiment. You do not need to give detailed derivations, but you should give sufficient references so that the reader can follow any derivations in full if they are interested. It is a good idea to number key equations so that you can refer back to them later in the report. Follow the advice in Appendix D on including mathematics in your report. B.3.3. Description of experimental layout and procedure You will need to describe the equipment you used, and the measurements you took. Don’t give instructions about how to do the experiment. Do explain what you did. You should give enough information that the reader could reconstruct the experiment for themselves, and you should remember that your reader is another first year student, so will have some experience of using lab equipment. This means that you do not need to give a detailed explanation of how to take each reading etc. It is usually a good idea to include a diagram of your equipment and layout. Use a diagram, not a photograph, because this allows you, and the reader, to concentrate on what is important. Remember that the diagram (and caption) are not an explanation in themselves of the experiment. You need to describe the equipment in the main text, and you will refer to the diagram to help the reader to understand what you mean. You need to introduce the reader to the experimental equipment, so the first time you mention your oscilloscope or voltmeter say ‘A voltmeter was used…’ and then you can refer to it as ‘the voltmeter’. This section is a good place to give any instrumental parameters, with uncertainties, such as the value of a resistance, or the length or mass of a key piece of equipment. Explain briefly which quantities you are measuring, and try to give the standard error you would expect on one measurement, so that the reader has a good idea of the precision of your equipment. B.3.4. Data and analysis This is where you present your measurements and analysis, leading to your final result. This section will probably contain most of your figures (graphs of your data) and tables if you have them, however, it also must contain sufficient text to explain to the reader what the figures and tables show, and why. Again, remember that figures and tables are not an explanation in themselves, but a helpful addition to the main text. Try not to split the error analysis from your data analysis. Each value you calculate only has physical meaning if it comes with an uncertainty so each time you calculate a value you should also give the uncertainty. You will probably have a plot showing your data and a least-squares best fit. Refer back to Section 6 which describes how to write a sensible caption for such a plot. Before you use the results of the fit you should consider the quality of the fit. 17 B.3.5. Discussion The aim of this part of the report is to communicate to the reader what you learned about physics from performing the experiment. How does your result compare with what's already known? Do the results support the theory which you may have described earlier in the theory section? What is the main contributer to the final uncertainty? How might the results be improved or extended? Remember how to judge significance with your uncertainties, see PHYS10181B. The discussion does not need to be a separate section of your report, and indeed for a short report like a lab report, it often makes sense to include it in the section where you present your results. B.3.6. Summary/Conclusions The final section of your main report will be the Summary (or Conclusions) section, where you collect together your most important results and the main points arising from your discussion. It should contain nothing new! It is similar to the abstract but rather more detailed. It is usually a good idea to begin this section by re-stating your key results. Don’t end your report with excuses such as the results would be better if only more time or better equipment were available. That’s nearly always true, but it doesn’t give the reader any useful information. However, if you can quantify by how much you will improve your final answer if you took more readings, or used a more precise measuring device, then this is useful for the reader. The emphasis in a report is to draw valid conclusions from the data actually available. Appendix C: Technical writing style Aim to write clearly, concisely and precisely. You should avoid repetition, particularly in descriptions of method and analysis. You can reference previous sections of your report, by number, to help avoid unnecessary repetition. However, there are some pieces of information which can be repeated. In particular the main results should appear in the abstract, in the main report and also in the final Summary section. The scientific style of writing research papers is quite formal, so avoid colloquial language and contractions. Writing in the passive voice will help you to maintain the required style. Sometimes it is clearer and simpler to use ‘we’ in an impersonal sense, but try not to over-use ‘I’ or ‘we’ as it can make the report seem too informal. Avoid giving instructions (that is the role of a lab script) or over-using conditional language. The reader is not very interested in what you could do or might have done, they want to read about what you actually did do. You should also avoid giving lists of equipment, steps in the method, results or anything else. All your writing should be in sentences and paragraphs. Remember that if you have several results, it can be neater and clearer to present them in a table rather than in a paragraph of text. 18 The following list summarises many of the points of writing style to avoid, and some which you should try to conform to. Check your report against this list before you submit it. ๏ท Avoid repeating material from the lab script and do not include the Aims and Objectives of the experiment as listed on the script. These relate to teaching outcomes and are not relevant for the report. ๏ท Avoid repetition of ideas, explanations, or discussion. ๏ท Do not give instructions. The last sentence is an instruction. You are not telling the reader how to do the experiment (that would be a lab script). You are reporting on the work you did. ๏ท Avoid detailed algebraic derivations. It is better to give the starting point and the equation you will be using, along with a reference (Young & Freedman is usually sufficient) so that your reader can go and look up the details if they are interested. For long or unfamiliar derivations you may also want to give key intermediate equations. ๏ท Avoid detailed arithmetical calculations. Just give the final result, with its uncertainty, making sure that the reader already knows the values which go into the calculation. ๏ท Avoid jargon and abbreviations. If you do use an abbreviation, give the full version the first time you use it in the main body of the report, e.g. the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and then just use the abbreviation. ๏ท Do not lapse into notes. Do avoid lists. Your report should all be written in good English and in sentences, throughout. ๏ท It is not usual to ask questions, as it is attention seeking. ๏ท Consider when words should begin with a capital letter. Sentences begin with a capital, as do proper names such as “Compton scattering” and “Young’s modulus”. This also includes reference to figures, equations and other sections of the report. So you would use “see Figure 1”, “as can be seen from Equation 2” or “discussed in the Introduction” for example. However, elements, for instance iron and argon, are not so honoured. ๏ท Avoid the concepts of “can”, “could”, “possible”. Be specific and say what you did. ๏ท Introduce the reader to the experiment. You can’t talk about the mirror until you’ve told the reader that there is a mirror. Referring to a figure showing the apparatus is often useful. Remember that the diagram in the figure is not an explanation in itself, your explanation should refer to the figure to help the reader see what you mean. ๏ท Check that each reference cited in the text is listed in the Reference section, and that all listed references are also cited in the main text. ๏ท Read your report critically. Does it make sense? ๏ท Delete all words that are not actually needed. For instance, delete the word “very” in the phrase “a very strong magnetic field”. ๏ท Do not include subjective comments, for instance that the results could have been better or that you didn’t enjoy the experiment. These can be put in the section on Personal Comments at the end of your report and on the Feedback Survey for each experiment. 19 Appendix D: Mathematics You will need to include some mathematics in your report, and this may well involve using Greek letters and other symbols. Take care to use symbols consistently, to avoid confusion. Each symbol or variable name should be defined the first time it is used. Note that equations should be treated as part of the sentence, even if they are displayed on a separate line. Follow the examples in this section to ensure that you follow the correct style for including mathematics in your report. D.1. Characters and symbols Greek letters and other special characters can be found by using Insert, Symbol. For convenience several commonly required symbols are listed here so that you can simply Copy and Paste them as needed. Some Greek characters: ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ก๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ข๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฐ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ค๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ง๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ณ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ณx2๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ณx๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ท๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฌ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ง๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ง๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ง๏ ๏ ๏ ๏จ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฐ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏น๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฃ๏ฒ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฅ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฅ๏ฏ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฑ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฆ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ช๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ญ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ญ๏ฏ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ด๏ฐ๏ฅ๏ฏ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฒ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฃr๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฅ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ฒ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ ๏ฎ๏ ๏ ๏ Some useful symbols: ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฑ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ป๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ด๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฅ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ซ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ช๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ญ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ง๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ถ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ก๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฑ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏พ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ฃ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏ณ๏ ๏ ๏ ๏น๏ ๏ ๏ ๏บ๏ ๏ฎ๏ Superscripts and subscripts can be made by typing the character, highlighting it, selecting Font, then tick superscript or subscript. When choosing subscripts for symbols, try to use only one or two letters or numbers (Fg or ๏R1๏ฉ๏ rather than whole words or long abreviations (Fgrav or ๏first-right). This makes the layout cleaner and easier to read. Some useful expressions you can copy and edit: 4.2 × 10๏ญ6 and (12.1 ± 1.5) × 108 and Tn . Note that a minus sign “๏ญ” is not the same as a hyphen “-”. For a minus sign, use Insert Symbol and the minus sign symbol (Unicode 2212). For a hyphen, use the hyphen key on your keyboard (en dash or Unicode 2013), which is usually together with the dash symbol (Unicode 2012). D.2. Equations All equations must be part of a grammatically correct English sentence. Each symbol you use should be defined the first time you use it. Note that you can number your equations so that you can refer back to them later, but you do not need to number every equation. Simple equations can be included in-line but usually it is neater and clearer to display the equation on a separate line, even though it is still part of the sentence. Displayed equations should be centred, and equation numbers should be at the right hand side. To avoid possible confusion, algebraic symbols are written in italic type but mathematical functions are in roman type. Don’t use the same symbol to mean two different things and don’t use different symbols to mean the same thing. The following examples show how to include equations in your text: 20 ๏ท The amplitude as a function of time is given by ๐ด = ๐ด sin ๐๐ก, where ๐ is the angular frequency. ๏ท The period, ๐, of a simple pendulum depends on its length, ๐, and is given by: ๐ ๐ = 2๐√๐ , (1) where ๐ is the acceleration due to gravity. ๏ท The gravitational force ๐น, between two point objects, of mass ๐1 and ๐2 , is given by ๐น= ๐บ๐1 ๐2 ๐ 2 , (2) where ๐ is the distance between them. Word’s equation editor uses the Cambria Maths font. Use Equation Editor for all equations rather than typing directly from the keyboard. (Click Insert Equation) This will ensure that the correct fonts are always used. For example, an italic capital F, using arial font (the standard report font), gives a different symbol to ๐น (equation editor). So F and ๐น should not be used to mean the same thing. The default in Word is that a new line following an object (e.g. an equation) is the beginning of a sentence and is automatically given a capital letter. Often you will not want a capital letter here, because you are in the middle of a sentence, as in Equation (1), so you need to replace the capital with a small letter. Equation Editor includes all sorts of goodies, including fractions, powers, subscripts and integral signs: ๐ ∫−๐ ๐ฅ 2 ๐๐ฅ = 2 3 ๐3 . You can stretch the height of the integral sign by highlighting one of the limits and right clicking, then Stretch N-ary Operator: ๐ ∫ ๐ฅ 2 ๐๐ฅ = −๐ 2 3 ๐3 . Note that there is a full stop after the equation, because the sentence ends there. If you want to include a reference to an equation, this should appear with the main text, not on the displayed line. This avoids any confusion between reference numbers and equation numbers. For example, the displacement ๐ฅ(๐ก) of a mass on a spring undergoing simple harmonic motion is given by [15] ๐ฅ(๐ก) = ๐ด sin(๐๐ก + ๐) (3) where ๐ด and ๐ are the amplitude and angular frequency of the oscillations and ๐ is a phase factor. This makes it clear that Equation (3) is taken from reference source [15]. 21