UCL Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
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Laboratory Books

What is a lab book and what you put in it

What it is

A lab book is what you use to write down all of you lab work in, it is a bound A4 sized book containing half lined paper and half graph paper.

You must bring a laboratory book to each of you laboratory sessions.

What do I put in it

Everything that you do in the laboratory goes in to your book even mistakes that you made, it’s a written record of what you’ve done, so if you are held up by faulty equipment you have a record of why and if you made mistakes you know what you did wrong.

Remember these are the main points to put in you book:-

  • Preparation Work; what is your goal, what you need to do, material to help speed up the lab, expected results, etc.
  • Experiment title.
  • Date and number each page.
  • Brief description of how you carried out the tasks.
  • What components you used and why.
  • Circuit Diagrams.
  • Calculations and working out.
  • Results and Discussions, did you ask for help ??? what was said and what advice was given.
  • Any points that you noticed about the experiment.
  • Fully label and title all graphs, diagrams, tables and calculations.
  • Note any errors in your results, due to what ever.
  • DO NOT rub/tip-ex/scribble out errors (It proves that you did try to do something even if it is wrong). 
  • If you are printing out graphs, stick them in straight away and not later. 
  • If you input your results to excel and plot graphs save your work, you might need more copies when you write a report.
  • All text, tables and graph axes MUST be in PEN.
  • Only diagrams and graph plots may be drawn in pencil.