General Lab Report Outline

Parts of  Lab:

  • Background:
    • Should be at least a page long
    • This explains all of the information your reader needs to know in order to understand your experiment.
    • Basically, here you explain the science behind all of the concepts used in this lab.
    • Should start broad – trying to get everyone’s interest, and explaining why this is important
    • Should end up very specific – talking about this individual experiment (question and hypothesis should be stated at or near the end
    • Past tense, passive voice (no personal pronouns)
  • Procedure:
    • Explains your methods and how they work
    • Indentifies your variables
    • Written in past tense, passive voice
  • Data:
    • All of the info you collected
    • Either a table, graph, or both where appropriate
    • All tables/graphs are titled and labeled correctly
    • Units are included
  • Analysis:
    • This is the written version of your data
    • Include any observations of trends or variances in your data
    • Also past tense passive voice
  • Conclusion:
    • Three paragraphs
    • Explain your data – why did you see the trends that you did
    • Make sure to use the information in your background to help explain your data
    • Address any possible errors and how they may have affected your experiment and data
    • Explain what your results mean to the real world – how can they affect people
  • Citations:
    • Cite any source used in proper MLA format (found on the library website)

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