If you are taking laboratory courses, then know that writing lab reports is an inevitable affair.

They make up a significant part of your overall grade so you might want to pay attention.

Some professors will provide you with the outline for writing a lab report, if you are still confused about what to include in the report and how to go about it then keep on reading.  

What is a lab report?

A lab report explains how an experiment was carried out, what was learned and significance of the results.

Lab reports are basically made to analyze a scientific process and the main goal is to

·         conduct a research,

·         increase your understanding about the scientific process,

·         develop a hypothesis,

·         find evidence to support your hypothesis,

·         provide enough details to allow someone else to replicate the study,

·         test the hypothesis by applying statistics,

·         analyze the obtained results.

Moving on to the structure of a lab report. Different lab reports may vary due to their length and format, but following are some of the essentials:

·         Title page

·         Title

·         Abstract

·         Introduction/purpose

·         Materials

·         Methods

·         Data results

·         Discussion/analysis

·         Conclusion

·         Figure and graphs

·         References

If your experiment was based on another person’s work or you cited some facts and figures then include it in the reference list.

There you have it the essentials of a lab report. What experiment did you write a lab report on?