Laboratory Books

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.