Lab Report Universal Requirements for Cell Biology 223

Key points to writing a scientific paper

What is a lab report?

• A written story about the tests (experiments) you did and how the natural world responded to
those tests
• Mainly who/what/why:
o Who are the characters?
o What did you do?
o How did your characters respond?
o Why did you test them this way? Why did they respond the way they did?

How to write a lab report

• Be concise and clear – spelling and grammar counts!
• Include enough info that anyone who has not done this experiment before could understand what
you did and why.
• Acknowledge where you got your information. Have a standardized reference section.
• More information at http://www.manula.com/manuals/trinity-western-universit/trinity-western-
university-biology-handbook/1/en/topic/the-student-biology-handbook (link is on Moodle)

Setting up a template in Microsoft Word

• Font size – 11 or 12 pt
• What “style” of font – a clear san-serif style e.g. Calibri or Tahoma
• Line spacing – 1.5 lines
• Margins – standard 1”, 2.5cm is fine. You will see our comments when we mark as dialog bubbles
you can click on
• Page headers not needed (we try to mark somewhat “blind”)
• Page numbers are a MUST
• Headings – clear headings for each section

Sections for a lab report

• Title: write in the present tense
• Introduction: write in the present tense
• Results: write in the past tense (third person generally. “I” “We” unless used formally)
• Discussion: write in the past tense (third person generally. “I” “We” unless used formally)
• Acknowledgements: Write in the present or past tense. Write in the 1st person

• A scientific article would also need an abstract and a methods and materials section. We do
not require this in our lab report.
• You do not need separate pages for each section. Just clearly define each section.
Title
• A brief summary of what you did.
• Be descriptive – e.g. organism/chemical used, procedure/technique used,
• One sentence if you can.
• Examples of good titles/bad titles
• After your title include: Your Name, Your Lab Partner’s Name, Your Lab Section, Your instructor’s
Name, due date.

Results
• What goes in the results?
o The results include your figures, graphs, the data
• What goes in the results vs. the discussion?
o The results are for presenting and describing the data
§ See example
• Formatting should make the best use of space… we don’t want 40 page reports with each picture
taking up a full page!
• Each lab report will have a specific guide posted to Moodle telling you how to format this section
(do we need a graph? What photos are we looking for etc.)
• FIGURE TITLES – go below. Don’t forget number your figures as they appear in the report and put
a scale, labels, units etc. as needed.
• TABLE TITLES – go above the table. Again number your tables in order and label everything!
• Writing should be interspersed in the results to go with the actual diagrams, tables or figures.

Discussion
• The discussion is for discussing why you think the data ended up this way
o What should you have seen? Why didn’t you see it? (ie. Potential technical difficulties)
o What could you change about the technique that could make it better?
• Draw conclusions based on your results (this will be the largest part of the discussion but your
discussion should be no longer than 4 pages in length).
• What errors did you make or were discovered in the technique? This section is helpful to integrate
into the conclusions part of the discussion and not have only errors as a section – it makes it easier
to read and follow along
• What could be changed to improve the experiment or to answer some of questions your result
have raised.

References
• A referencing guide has been posted on Moodle
• We recommend you do not use webpages to prepare your lab reports – they are difficult to verify.
• We expect a minimum of 3 journal articles and what ever textbooks you used to be referenced.
• Each journal has a preferred way to reference. We are not picky on whether you “italicize” your
journal name etc. as long as you are consistent within your lab report.
• You need to make sure you do not miss any information in this section needed to get to the
article/textbook.
• You must include full reference here for any in-text you used.
• Never reference your instructor!
Plagiarism
• Scientific Writing NEVER uses Quotes!!!
• Examples of what is considered plagiarism:
o Copying material from books/articles/websites and presenting as your own work – if it is similar
in words or even presentation style of facts this is considered plagiarism even if you provide a
citation
o Handing in an assignment that looks identical to someone else’s assignment, even if you worked
together on the assignment, it must your own original work or it is considered plagiarism
o Not providing in-text citations and full references for facts taken from sources such as
books/articles/websites
o Borrowing someone’s data and not acknowledging the source

AI Use
• You may use AI to brainstorm develop ideas
• You may use AI to help with grammar/spelling (eg. Grammarly)
• If you wish to use AI to generate paragraphs, you must
o 1) Fact check with original sources. You will be responsible for any error or omissions
provided by the tool.
o 2) Copy your prompts and text generated from the AI into a separate Appendix section
in your report. Failure to do so is in violation of the Policy for Academic Misconduct and
Fraud.
o 3) Direct copying from AI for your lab reports is an automatic less than 49% for that lab
report. Flagrant copying with text only minor relevance to the lab report requirements
will result in a percentage less than 49% at the discretion of the marker. Only by
modifying the AI output do you gain more marks.

Excel and how to draw graphs

• Open an excel file
• Enter the data into two columns, the y axis should come first and x axis second (they can easily be
switch if you mix them up)
• Select the data and go to the insert tab along the top of the screen
• What type of graph do you want?
o For line graphs it is best to select scatter plot so you can add a straight trendline later
• Format the graph as necessary – remember titles go on the bottom (you can move them in excel!)
• Copy/paste into your Word file, graph don’t need to take up a whole or even a half page – they
just need to be a size that makes it easy to read (depends on how much data is on the graph)

Turn It In
• Log in information is on Moodle…. Go ahead and log in.
• Limited file size (so you may have to resize pictures in your report).
• Information on how to do this:
• Since Turnitin.com does not accept large uploads (nor does our email system) here are a few ways
to reduce the file size of your lab report.

Reduce a picture size in Microsoft office

http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/reduce-the-file-size-of-a-picture-HA010192200.aspx
Reduce a PDF file size in mac office:
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH7252

Use an online converter:

https://smallpdf.com/