Lab Report Instructions – HUMAN ANATOMY PHYS II LAB Section 022 Summer Semester 2022

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BIOL2120 Laboratory Reports

Instructions

A complete laboratory report should follow the general form used in writing a professional scientific paper. The material in the report should be organized into six sections plus a title page. Your lab report must contain the sections indicated below. With the exception of the title page, each section (intro, methods, etc.) should be labeled to make your report easier to follow.

Title Page: You should have a title that is limited to your subject matter, but as descriptive as possible. Avoid overly general titles, ex. “The termites”. A more appropriate title might be, “A demonstration of ink preferences in wood-dwelling termites”. This page should also include a list of your fellow experimenters. While you will complete the experiments in groups, each student must individually complete and write his or her own lab report.

Introduction: This section should introduce the topic of your experiment and should include any PERTINENT background information needed to understand the experiment. Cite references for

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background material where appropriate. At the end of this section, you should state the major objective or purpose of your experiment (this should be concise) and clearly state your hypothesis.

Materials and Methods: In this section, you should describe the materials used and the EXACT procedures that you followed while performing your experiment. If you used a different procedure than listed in the lab manual, you should describe the procedure that you actually used. A person should be able to read this section and perform your experiment exactly the way you did. Do not give the results of your experiment in this section, only materials and procedures.

Results: This section should include 2 parts: 1. a written description of the results in the body of the paper, 2. a graph(s) or table(s) on a separate page displaying the results. Do not explain or comment on the significance of the results here, just give the data. Every table or graph must have a descriptive title (“termite data” is not descriptive enough) and labeled axes with units of measure clearly indicated. Tables consist of columns and rows of numbers or other information and should be numbered in sequence and referred to in the written results section, ex. “Termites followed the red ink for an average of 5 seconds

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(Table 1).” Graphs are called figures and are referred to in the same manner, ex. Fig.1.

Discussion: In this section, you should indicate if your hypothesis was supported, explain your results, and indicate the significance of the results. A hypothesis cannot be proven by a single experiment. You should interpret your results as “supportive of” or “failed to support” the hypothesis. To the best of your ability, you should explain what was occurring during your experiment, why you got the results that you did, and any possible sources of error. You should also indicate the significance of your results. How might this information be used? What are the implications of your results? Lastly, you may want to develop further experiments that might be used to lend more support to the hypothesis, or develop a totally new hypothesis based on your results.

Clinical Implications: In this section, explain how the information you learned from this experiment relates to clinical/hospital procedures.

Literature cited: Whenever you cite a fact or an idea, cite the reference giving credit to your sources. This should be done in the body of the report so that it is clear to the reader. For example: “That cytochrome included three distinct enzymes was first shown by

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Keilin (1925)” or “It is known that cytochrome consists of three distinct enzymes (Keilin, 1925).” The literature cited section consists of a list of references which should include the author’s name, initials, year of publication, journal, specific volume, and the pages. For example: Keilin, D., 1925. Proc. Rev. Soc. London, B98: 312-329

When referencing books use the following form: Eckert, R., and D. Randell, 1978. Animal Physiology. 1st ed. W.H. Freeman and Co. 510 pp.

Additional points:

1. The report should be concise. Four to six typewritten pages should be sufficient.

2. Avoid the first person, ex. “the termites were placed on the paper, and the time each termite followed each line measured with a stopwatch” not “Suzi placed the termites on the paper, and I timed how long each termite followed the lines”.

3. Use precise English and avoid useless words such as “First,…Next,…Then,…” or “then we proceeded to”.