PARTS OF A LAB REPORT:
1.
INTRODUCTION
a)
Purpose
b)
Related Theory
c)
Hypothesis
2.
EXPERIMENTAL
a)
Materials
b)
Procedure
c)
Observations
d)
Analysis
3.
CONCLUDING SECTION
a) Sources of Error
b) Application to Society
c) Conclusion
TITLE
ON the top right corner of the FIRST
PAGE:
Name of experiment or exercise
•
Your name
•
Name of lab partners
•
Name of class
•
Date experiment done
By: Heather Fogell
Lab Partners: Olive Science, SNC 2D
Date: February 1, 2004
INTRODUCTION
The introduction section is your Pre Lab to be written
before you enter the lab.
It includes:
Purpose
INTRODUCTION
Purpose:
INTRODUCTION
The Related Theory…
• supplies background information needed to understand
the study.
• may provide a theoretical basis and historical context
for the work done in the lab.
• Specifies the problem and hypothesis.
To write the Related Theory…
• Give background information on your topic and more
specific information on the exact areas that you are
studying
• Cite information that has been published in research
articles or books related to your study.
INTRODUCTION
Purpose: To see if the colour distribution in M&M’s candy is even in a package.
Related Theory
M&M’s are a popular snack food made by M&M Mar’s Company. First developed in 1941 and famous for “Melting in your mouth and not I your hands” each candy consists of chocolate covered with a hard colored coating (1). In the 1980’s variations were added that contained peanuts, pretzels, coconut, and coating colors were added that mirrored
traditional holiday colors (2). This study explores the allocation of coating colors within the king-size
packages of peanut M&M’s. Specifically, are the same amount of each color candy in each
package?.
Color variation in M&M's By: Heather Fogell Lab Partners: Olive Science,
SNC 2D
Related Theory:
(another example)
In this lab we will be studying different components of an
ecosystem. The basic components of the ecosystem will be
classified as biotic or abiotic. Biotic refers to any living or
recently alive component while abiotic refers to anything that
has always been lifeless. To determine the relationships that
exist it is important to understand the four spheres of the
earth. The four spheres are the Hydrosphere, Lithosphere,
Atmosphere and Biosphere. Events that occur in each of the
spheres have impacts on the others. These spheres
What is a Scientific Hypothesis?
• A scientific hypothesis is not an educated
guess!
• Hypotheses are
based on
:
– Prior experience
– Scientific background knowledge
– Preliminary observations
Hypothesis
A Hypothesis IS a Testable prediction
• Possible explanation of an experience or
observation in nature
• Always as a statement, never as a question
• It must be
falsifiable
! (This means it can, in
theory, be proven wrong)
Hypothesis Examples
“If the weather is humid, then a Frisbee will
travel further when thrown.”
“If car tires are kept at equal pressure, then the car
will use less gasoline.”
INTRODUCTION
Purpose: To see if the colour distribution in M&M’s candy is even in a package.
Related Theory
M&M’s are a popular snack food made by M&M Mar’s Company. First developed in 1941 and famous for “Melting in your mouth and not I your hands” each candy consists of chocolate covered with a hard colored coating (1). In the 1980’s variations were added that contained peanuts, pretzels, coconut, and coating colors were added that mirrored traditional holiday colors ….
Hypothesis: It is hypothesized that color assortment is random and the same amount of each color is not present in each king-size package.
Color variation in M&M's By: Heather Fogell Lab Partners: Olive Science,
SNC 2D
Materials and Procedure
• In most cases for grade 9 you will be given the materials to use
and the procedure to follow.
• For your report these sections must be placed in the correct
order but to save time you may simply place the heading with
reference where to find the information
Materials
10 bags of traditional M&Ms
Procedure:
OBSERVATIONS (DATA)
PRESENT FINDINGS:
• usually in the form of numerical data
• Provide data that have been condensed to some degree rather than raw data. • If you are presenting calculated means, include some measure of data variability
(e.g. standard deviations).
USE
TABLES
OR
FIGURES
:
• DO NOT simply refer readers to tables and figures!! Results must be verbally expressed in this section.
• Draw the reader's attention to particularly noteworthy data or the presence of meaningful trends
• If possible, support this with statistical analyses, keeping in mind that statistical significance may conflict with your sense of biological significance.
HELPFUL TIP: The text of this section should summarize the data, but stop short of interpreting their meaning or drawing major conclusions
TABLES
*May be used to organize large groups of numbers
1) Include a table heading at the top,
summarizing the table’s contents. It is
usually a SINGLE sentence fragment and
may lack a verb.
2) Use superscripts and footnotes to provide
additional information about the contents of
the table.
3) Each table should be on its own piece of
Table #1 - Number of M&M's of each color per bag.
Color
Bag #1 - Number of
M&M's
Bag #2 - Number of
M&M's
Bag #3 - Number of
M&M's
Red 10 8 13
Orange 5 7 10
Green 7 5 8
Yellow 8 10 7
Brown 13 7 5
Results
As seen in table #1, none of the
bags have the same amount of each
color. Figure #1 shows brown is
the most frequent in bag one and
orange is the least. Figure #2
shows blue is the most frequent in
bag two and green is the least.
Analysis
• In most cases for grade 9 you will be given the analysis
questions to follow.
• For your report this section is to be written using complete
sentence structure.
Concluding Section
Sources of Error
1) Write a complete paragraph for this section
2)
- discuss possible sources of error within your procedure and the
impact the errors may have on your results.
Sources of Error
Concluding Section
APPLICATION TO SOCIETY
• Write a complete paragraph for this section
• discuss possible uses for the material covered in this lab
( Not when you repeat this lab some time and not some scientist
somewhere completing a similar lab), do some research!
Application to Society
The purpose of this lab was to determine the colour distribution in a bag of M&M candy. This is a basic statistical analysis. The science of statistics is important and used in many areas of society. People who work in news reporting will often use statistics and charts to help their audience understand the topic. Statistical analysis is also used by sports teams to analyze their games. Sports recruiters use statistics to check out potential athletes. Sports teams also use statistics to prepare for
upcoming opponents. They look to see which players on the opposing teams are doing well at that time. (Nelson 1999) They also use statistics to decide which players are doing well and they try to predict which players will bring the best results for the game. Not only do we see statistics used in these areas but there is also a science behind the color mix in your favorite bag of M&Ms, and its based on "consumer preference tests." Consumer data is used in developing many
products and for the M&M the mix follows these color percentage breakdown: M&M'S Milk Chocolate: 30% brown, 20% yellow, 20% red, 10% orange, 10% green, and 10% blue. (Suddath 2010 ) In the past blue was not among the colours but the colour Tan was included. This change was made based on consumer
(CONCLUSION)
Interpret your data and evaluate the meaning of your results.
The Discussion includes the following…
• Briefly summarize trends or important results
• Was your hypothesis, as stated in the Introduction, supported by the data? • Do your results contradict, reaffirm, or extend previously published findings? • Answer the problem.
When writing this section…
• Don't be afraid to report "negative" data (e.g., lack of relationships among variables).
• If your data seem unreasonable, provide reasons that might help explain this. • If possible, connect your findings with the results from published studies by
using literature citations.
• DO NOT discuss every aspect of your data and DO NOT provide every conceivable explanation for the obtained results.
• Speculation should be limited and clearly identified as your own speculation. • The last paragraph should be a STRONG STATEMENT of the TAKE-HOME
LITERATURE CITED
• All citations that appear in the body of your
lab report must be listed in this section.
• Use the author-year or numeric format to
arrange the citations.
CITATIONS W/IN THE PAPER
• Appropriate literature can be cited in the Introduction, Methods, and Discussion sections.
• Citations most commonly appear at the end of a sentence inside parentheses as illustrated in the following examples:
– Growth rates are positively correlated with rainfall (Jones 1993).
– Growth rates are positively correlated with rainfall (Jones 1993, Roy and Smith 1988).
– Growth rates are positively correlated with rainfall (Jones 1993, Roy and Smith 1988, Williams et al. 1937).
** “et al.” shows that Williams had two or more coauthors. All author’s names should appear in the complete citation in the Literature Citation section.
• The above format is preferred although some writers will explicitly insert the cited author's name(s) into a sentence:
– Jones (1993) found that growth rates are positively correlated with rainfall.
– A positive correlation between growth rates and rainfall was found by Jones (1993).
http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/topics/stat.html DeAnn Nelson Statistics in the Real World Math 750J Workshops in the summers of 1999 and 2000. The Color Mixture in an M&Ms Bag Is a Precise Science, and Other Candy Facts Published October 23, 2012 Evan Dashevsky available at
http://dealnews.com/features/The-Color-Mixture-in-an-M-Ms-Bag-Is-a-Precise-Science-and-Other-Candy-Facts/626727.html
Tan M&Ms Claire Suddath Thursday, Aug. 19, 2010 available at
FORMAT FOR VARIOUS SOURCES OF
CITATION
RESEARCH ARTICLES
• Booth, D.A. 1995. Cognitive processes in odorant mixture assessment. Chemical Senses 20:639643.
• Drews, D., Vaughn, D.B. and Anfiteatro, A. 1992. Beer consumption as a function of music and the presence of others. Journal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science 65:134-136.
• Keeling, L.J. and Hernia, J.F. 1996. Social facilitation acts more on the appetitive than the consummatory phase of feeding behaviour in domestic fowl. Animal Behaviour 52:1 1-15.
BOOK
MORE CITATION FORMATTING
EDITED VOLUME• Hocutt, C.H., Baily, R. and Stauffer, J.R. 1992. An environmental primer for less developed countries, with an emphasis on Africa. Pages 39-62 in Cairns, J., Jr., Niederlehner, B.R. and OIvos, D.R. (eds.). Predicting Ecosystem Risk. Princeton Scientific Publishing Co., Inc. Princeton, NJ.
WORLD WIDE WEB DOCUMENT
• Basic information in the citation: Author's name(s). Date of publication. Title of work. Available from: Protocol: address and path. Accessed date of visit.
Example:
• Collins, F. and Patrinos, A. 1996 August 16. NCHGR---DOE guidance on human subjects in large-scale DNA sequencing [monograph online]. Available from:
MORE CITATION FORMATTING
ELECTRONIC JOURNAL ARTICLE
• Basic information in the citation: Author's name(s). Date of publication. Title of work. Title of serial [serial online] Volume number: pages. Available from: protocol, address, and path.
Example:
• Martin, E.P. 1996. Phylogenies, spatial autoregression, and the comparative method: a computer simulation test. Evolution [serial online] 50:1-14. Available from: Infotrac Expanded Academic Index.
ELECTRONIC CORRESPONDENCE
• Basic information in the citation: Author's name(s). Date of message. Title or subject line [type of medium]. Available from: protocol, address, and path.
Examples:
• Smith, J. 1997 February 13. Re: Scientific style [email to Keck, A.]. Available from: ajkOO 1 @alpha.momingside.edu
