[jiunshan]

Good Morning!

   I m preparing a lab report about 'To standardize a solution of sodium hydroxide with oxalic acid' right now but I have a question. What should I write in discussion and conclusion? Any idea or tips how I can prepare my lab report?

[mike]

Writing a chemistry report

A report should:
1.   be complete but concise
2.   have a logical structure
3.   be easy to read.

Structure of a report:
1.   Title
2.   Abstract
3.   Introduction
4.   Materials and Methods
5.   Results
6.   Discussion
7.   Conclusion
8.   Acknowledgements
9.   Appendices
10.   References

Use of English
   Writing in the third person. The generally accepted convention is to write a report in the third person.

Example of first person: “I measured the pressure at time intervals of 30s.”
Example of third person: “The pressure was measured at time intervals of 30s.”
   Tense. Generally reports are written in the past tense when reporting what was done in the experiment.

Example: “The solution was refluxed for 1 hour.”

The present tense may be used when inferring relationships from data:

Example: “The graph indicates that the absorbance is directly proportional
to concentration.”

Sentence length. Keep sentences short.

Abbreviations. Explain abbreviations fully the first time you use them.

Title. The title of the report should be brief and informative.

Introduction. The introduction provides the reader with the background to the experiment and the aims/goals of the experiment. The introduction may outline what is already known about the experiment and what the writer aimed to achieve with the experiment.

Materials and methods. This section of the report tells the reader how the experiment was performed and what equipment was used. This section includes diagrams of apparatus and  brief descriptions of common techniques used. You could also include references to common techniques used in this section. If the method is new or you have modified the method in some way then you record a detailed account of the method in this section. This should be written in enough detail to allow others to repeat your work.

Results. This section is where you report the results of the experiment. Where possible results should be reported as graphs or in tables. Calculations should also be reported in the section.

Discussion. The discussion section deals with the interpretation of the results that are presented in the results section. Any problems with the experiment can be discussed in this section. Whether the results support the hypothesis of the experiment or not they should be discussed. Often seemingly “poor” results can offer as much insight to the problem at hand as “good” results. You need to discuss what can be usefully said about the data that was collected by the method described for the experiment.

Conclusion. The conclusion refers back to the aim of the experiment and how far the experiment goes in achieving that aim. This is a good section to include comparisons with other similar experiments in the literature. If your experiment resulted in a value that has been reported in the literature then it is good to compare your value to the reported value.

References. References give the reader access to background information to the experiment, similar experiments performed by others, and results obtained from other experiments.