Lab+Notebook+Guidelines

Guidelines for Lab NotebooksYour Composition book will serve as your lab book for the course. The first two pages of the book should be reserved for a Table of Contents. Each experiment should be listed with a Title and a date for when the experiment took place. Entries must be written in pen and any corrections that are made must be crossed out and an explanation of why the correction is being made.Each experiment must have the following components.
 * 1)  Descriptive Title
 * 2)  Problem: what problem are you solving and what are the objectives of the lab
 * 3)  Hypothesis: an educated guess on what is going to happen in the experiment. Must be an if….then…. statement. For example: If the temperature is raised, then the chocolate will melt.
 * 4)  Variables: list the independent (AKA responding variable/ the one the experimenter changes) and dependent variables (AKA manipulated variable/ the one that changes due to the independent variable)
 * 5)  Procedure: write a brief description of what was done in the experiment. If there is any unique apparatus explain it and draw it. Be sure to specify quantities of chemicals. Should be in paragraph form
 * 6)  Results:
 * 7)  Record the results as observations: visual descriptions of a chemical change or appearance
 * 8)  Record the results as data: Neatly arranged measured values listed in tabular form, often with class spreadsheet tables having your values highlighted. The ** units ** of measurement //** must be included **// with the numerical values. The accuracy of the measurement can also be included as a range (+/-).Calculated answers that are derived by performing a mathematical operation with the data can be included in the data table.
 * 9) ** Analysis: **** what does the data mean? Interpret graphs **** here. Answer any analysis questions here. Make sure they are in paragraph form. **
 * 10) ** Conclusion: ** Write a summary of your work on the topic under study. It should provide your interpretations of the results in order to answer the specific problem statement. Include a discussion of the accuracy and precision of results, comparing your answers to class averages and values. Suggest possible reasons for all errors and how to improve the accuracy and the precision of the experimental procedures. Be sure to include any answers to the analysis questions that go with the lab.
 * 11)  Each student is required to record the results of the experimentation in their own lab journals, as the work is completed. At the conclusion of each lab period, it is the student’s responsibility to show the journal entry to their instructor for verification of the data and information recorded.