3 Experimental setup and method
The experimental setup is ideally described along with a figure of flow chart type. The mea-
surements and calculations should be explained in such way that someone else with similar
knowledge can reproduce the same experiment. It is important to estimate the systematical
errors of the experiment and show them along with the results in the result section.
3.1 Layout and language
Here follows a short summary of the general layout and language of the whole report. The lan-
guage should be academic and objective, and be written in the same tense throughout the re-
port. Often no personal pronouns are used. Make sure you run your text through a spelling
program before you hand it in, and correct grammar mistakes.
There is no exact rule of what font to use, or what size a header should be in, but there is one
important rule: the layout should be consistent! This means that the headers should use the
same font and size, the text should have the same appearance, there should be page numbering
and numbers on figures, tables, and equations, so that it is easy to refer to them in the text.
If you are collaborating it is especially important to make sure that the contributions from the
different authors fit together in a consistent way. A practical tool for scientific writing is L
A
T
E
X[2].
It is a typesetting system which include features designed for producing a technical and scientific
document, it automatically keeps track of sections, numbering and a consistent style. Almost all
scientific publications are written in L
A
T
E
X. With this document follows the text-file that is used to
produce the pdf-file. You are free to use it as a skeleton for your reports. All you need to do is to
download a L
A
T
E
X compiler and compile labreportExample.tex.
4 Results
This is the section where the results from the measurements are presented. Results are often
presented in tables or in the form of a plot, i.e. a diagram or a graph showing the relevant ob-
servable. A diagram showing results from your measurements can be compared to a theoretical
curve in the section for results, but the discussion of the interpretation comparing your results
with theoretical models should be restricted to the discussing section. The figure should, how-
ever, always be mentioned in (and be relevant to) the text.
Figures and tables should have a title and be numbered so that it can be referred to in the
text, and the table columns and axes in a diagram should be clearly labeled with observable
name and units, where the variable comes first, and then, after a slash, the unit, e.g. λ/µm, or
U/kV. The figure caption should contain a description of what is shown in the plot (so that the
plot could be understood without reading the text), but no interpretations should be done in the
caption, see example plot Fig. 2.
5 Discussion
The discussion is the most important part of the lab report and should not be rushed over. This
is where you interpret your results and compare to theory: are your results expected? Connect
5