Student Project Pages
The following Powerpoint 97 presentations contain a mixture of related slides used at both level, level 3 and Masters. The file may be downloaded from the index file of each presentation
One of the key skills that any scientist must develop is the ability to produce an accurate, informative and tidy record of the day-to-day activities in the laboratory. The formulation of all laboratory based science is the record of your experimental procedures.
Most student laboratory note books are poor. Some are worse than others but most are less than adequate in one or more ways.
You must use a bound note book rather than a loose leaf folder since you cannot mislay, add or remove individual pages. This is vital in a real laboratory environment where what is recorded in a laboratory book can decide the sucess or failure of a product, or a patent on which millions of pounds might depend. If you have to use additional pages or data output make sure it is firmly and permaneltly fixed into the book.
Remember Laboratory Books must:
The following minimal features should be found in everyone's laboratory notebook accounts of their laboratory work. They are not for your benefit alone, they will improve the usefulness of your notes in the longer term, especially when you or someone else wants to refer to your results. This is particularly important when you are writing up a practical report, dissertation or thesis.
Dates
Put the date for every day that you work in the laboratory (however brief!). Write it in the top right hand corner of the page for easy reference. Date all the photographs, autoradiographs or traces that you prepare and, if necessary, cross-reference them to the page number in your notebook to which they refer. Rember that laboratory books should be a direct record of what you have actually done - write the details down as you do them not at the end of the day.Title
Every experiment or procedure must have an informative title - experiment 1 is not sufficient!Experimental Aims
. Why did you design it the way you did? What previous results prompted you to do this experiment? What do you expect?Materials and Methods
These must be an accurate account of what you did and how you did it, the samples, the reaction mixtures etc. This tends to be all that most of us write whereas it is only one important feature of a laboratory notebook. The details of the experiment should be comprehensive so that another person could repeat what you did from your notesResults
. This will include any photographs, readings, measurements etc. that are generated by the experiment . Write all these raw data in your laboratory notebook not on a paper towel or scraps of paper so you can check your results or your calculation later if something goes wrong, or your experiment gives unexpected results. Remember you often do not really know what the outcome of your experiment is going to be. It is in the nature of experiments to be uncertain. Do not discard any data even if you thimk it is wrong or meaningless. Beware of prejudice and belief! Write the results legibly and arrange data in clear labelled columns or tables.Analysis, discussion and conclusions
After the practical part of the experiment you now get to the whole point of your frantic activity. This is perhaps the most important aspect of your laboratory book where you analyze and discuss the experiment EXPLICITLY, not just in your head. It is your record for posterity and it is inestimably helpful for ones own thought processes to set out your conclusions and why you arrived at them. It also forces you to face the weaknesses in your experimental design and to suggest ways that you can address them in your next experiment. Even in the most basic of laboratory practical exercises you must have a concluding sentence or twoNever put off analyzing your results. No experiment is a failure. Profit from an experiment but remember that is your failure not the experiments!! Every experiment should be a stepping stone towards a better approach next time. Learn from your mistakes.
Your laboratory note book is your FRIEND. Be PROUD of your work and PRESENT it with PRIDE.
A laboratory notebook is a reflection of how you work in the laboratory
Is yours ? - incomprehensible and incomplete.
In many laboratory based units in Life Sciences one of the coursework assessments will be a laboratory book. Students who do not comply with these requirements will loose marks.
E-mail any comments or suggestions to:mailto:D.P.%20Humber@UEL.AC.UK
©David Humber 1996 - Last Modified: Sunday, December 5th 27, 1997 at 09:15 PM
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