Lab Report Format for PHYS 2211

and PHYS 2212

J.A. Secrest
VERSION 1.0
August 18, 2009

1 Overview
Lab reports are important because they allow you to practice and see in
action the different physical phenomena that you learn about in class. You
can think of the labs as a hands on approach to the ”book learning” that you
have experienced. The labs are suppose to further illustrate key concepts
covered in class and give you a deeper understanding of the different physics
topics that we will have covered. The labs also allow you to gain practice in
taking measurements which is an important aspect of science and engineering.
The labs are also a chance to produce a document that contains the data
you have taken, the analysis that you have performed, and finally the report
allows you to show your results and findings. It is important that scientists
and engineers are able to clearly and succinctly describe the work that they
have performed.

2 Before you write your report

This will help you prepare to write a good report. You should record all your
data in a notebook that you designate for labs only. You should write only
on the front side of the paper. You should take notes of what you are doing
besides the data you are recording (i.e. is something odd going on? You
should record it. Maybe you would like to make a sketch of the apparatus

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that you are using.). It is better to write down something that you will not
use later then to not write down something you wished you had later on.

3 Lab Report Format

The format of your lab report should be as follows:
• Title
• Abstract
• Purpose/Theory
• Discussion of the materials and apparatus used
• Experimental Procedure
• Analysis
• Error Analysis
• Results
You may either write your reports up by hand or on the computer. Re-
ports done on the computer typically look better then those done by hand.
Your lab reports should be neat and orderly. You should not write on the
back of the sheets of paper of the report. The layout of the report is discussed
in more detail below.

1. Cover Sheet: This it where you put your title, name, date that the ex-
periment was performed, along with your lab partners’ names. Further down
the page is typically where the abstract will go. The abstract is typically a
few lines stating what the problem is, the technique used to investigate the
problem and the result. Abstracts are very short.

2. Purpose/Theory: You should motivate why you are performing the

measurements that you are doing. You should provide a statement of the
problem to be investigated. This provides the overall direction for your lab-
oratory investigation. Then you should write up a small theory section de-
scribing the physics that you are probing.

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 3. Materials and Apparatus: This is a short write up, almost a laundry
list, of what you used to make your measurements. Sometimes a descrip-
tion of the experimental apparatus is nice to mention along with a sketch of
schematic of the device. A detailed diagram to illustrate the configuration
of the apparatus never hurts and should be in this section. All the variables
to be measured should be clearly labeled.

4. Experimental Procedure: Describe how you performed the experiment.

Make sure to identify all the variables. Also describe how independent vari-
ables were controlled. You should write this up, not as a recipe, but in a
way such that someone who was not present would be able to understand
what you and your colleagues have done. You might also note what you
had anticipated and what you had not anticipated. You could also note if
there were serious pitfalls that were discovered during the data taking period.

5. Data: Data consists of the measured values that you took during data
taking. Many times data is nicely shown with the use of tables (see section
on Data Tables). Don’t forget that physical measurements many times have
units (such as kg, m, s, etc.) and should be noted.
5. Analysis: Here you will show some sample calculations. Graphs (see the
section on Graphs for a further discussion) should go in this location. Graphs
should have a title, they should have their axes labeled. Graphs should make
looking at the data and results easier and simpler, it should not obfuscated
the results!

6. Error Analysis: This is one of the most important parts of the report.
Here you might look at things like what the mean, median, and/or standard
deviation of a set of measurements. You might do a chi-square analysis to see
how well your fit to the data agrees with the mathematical function chosen.
You might determine percent error or percent difference in this section.

7. Results: This section is contains your findings and here you should
discuss h ow this demonstrates (or does not demonstrate) the particular
phenomena that you were looking at. Here you will discuss if your data agree
with the accepted va lue. Here you will give reasons for errors, personal
observations, suggestions on how to make the measurement better in the
future and any other comments that you feel are important.

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4 Further descussuion on Error Analysis
The reason why error analysis is so important is because it says how well
the data was taken (i.e. is there a huge dispersion of values for a certain
measurement). It could tell you how well you are modeling the data with
your mathematics. It says something about how your result compares to the
accepted value of that result.
Making a measurement means nothing if you cannot say something about
how well your measurement really is. It is accepted that the earth’s gravita-
tional constant is 9.8 m/s2 . If your measurement of g is 15.3 ± 6.2 m/s2 , it
might seem well off, but within error bars its perfectly acceptable.
There are two large categories of errors: systematic and statistical. Sta-
tistical errors are just that...they are related to the number of measurements
you make. The more measurements you make, the better your statistical
errors will be. Statistical errors tend to be ”cook bookish”. Systematic er-
rors on the other hand are related to some effect that occurs over and over
and consistently as you make your measurements. These errors are hard to
quantify and you have to think hard and smartly as to how you will handle
them.
The classical example of statistical and systematic errors are elucidated
with a ruler. Lets say we make measurements with a 12 inch ruler over and
over. We expect the values we measure to be clustered around 12 inches with
some standard deviation. The values might be different due to the angle we
make our measurement at or mis-readings, etc. But we expect the values
to be clustered around 12 inches. Systematic errors would occur if using a
mislabeled 11 inch ruler that says 12 inches on it. Its obvious that you will
constantly be measuring values that say 12 inches but will actually be off by
1 inch systematically.
Some important equations and quantities are described further in this
document.

Percent error: This is used when comparing results to an accepted value.

measured value − accepted value
percent error = × 100 (1)
accepted value

Percent difference: This is used when comparing two results from dif-
ferent experimental methods. The average of two measurements is probably

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close to the actually value then either measurement so the average is used in
the denominator
value1 − value2
percent difference = × 100 (2)
valueavg
value1 +value2
where valueavg = 2
.

Mean: The mean of a set of data is the average value of the data set.
Here you add up all the values of divide by the number of values that you
have.

Standard deviation: This is a description of the range of variation of a

set of data. The standard deviation, σ, is determined by taking your data
values, x1 ,x2 ,...,xN where N is the number of values you have and performing
the following equation,
r
(x1 − µ)2 + (x2 − µ)2 + ... + (xN − µ)2
σ= . (3)
N −1

5 Discussion on Graphs
During many of the experiments that we will be conducting you will need to
construct a graph. A good graph should have the following properties:
• the graph should be referenced in the text somewhere like this: ”See
Figure 1 for an example of a decent plot”,
• the graph should have a title,
• the graph should have axis labels on each axis,
• the graph needs to have time marks to indicate the divisions on the
x and y axis,
• the graph should have units describing the tick marks,
• and, if you need to show the slope and y-itercept, you should clearly
plot it and label what teh values are on the plot.

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Figure 1: An example of a decent plot. Its too bad this person decided not
to put any values on the plot of their regression analysis. Also note they did
not put a title at the top of the plot. A title at the top like, ”Regression of
Data vs. Time” would have been useful to the reader.

6 Further discussion on Data Tables

A data table is an excellent was of showing data. A good data should be
easily read by someone with a cursory knowledge of what you are doing. The
following are some general criteria for a good data table:

• Each Table should be headed by a table number and title,

• tables should be divided into columns with each column clearly labeled,

• a nice table is shown in Table 1 below.

An Example data table

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 bin Radius Theta Mean Std Dev volume(cm3 ) volume fraction
0 0 - 150 0 - 3.1416 0.0000901 0.00347001 1.41372e+07 0.0202855
1 150 - 375 0.0 - 0.3927 0.0103571 0.00328529 7.86924e+06 0.0112916
2 150 - 375 0.3927 - 1.1781 0.0085351 0.00273641 5.59481e+07 0.0802801
3 150 - 375 1.1781 - 1.9635 0.0012989 0.00307843 7.91225e+07 0.113533
4 150 - 375 1.9635 - 2.7489 -0.0025138 0.00309948 5.59477e+07 0.0802795
5 150 - 375 2.7489 - 3.1416 -0.0041039 0.00749839 7.86895e+06 0.0112912
6 375 - 550 0.0 - 0.3927 0.0304091 0.0107477 1.81174e+07 0.0259967
7 375 - 550 0.3927 - 1.1781 0.0000000 0.0000000 1.2881e+08 0.18483
8 375 - 550 1.1781 - 1.9635 -0.0080039 0.00310851 1.82165e+08 0.261388
9 375 - 550 1.9635 - 2.7489 -0.0121707 0.00355207 1.28809e+08 0.184828
10 375 - 550 2.7489 - 3.1416 -0.0135194 0.00505766 1.81168e+07 0.0259958

Table 1: This table relates to the energy scale. This table describes the binning
as it relates to radius and theta, along with the computed means and standard
deviations associated with each of the bins. The computed volume of each bin
is also given along wit h the fractional volume as compared to the fiducial
volume.