Guidelines in Preparation of the Lab Report

In general terms, the role of engineers in society is to translate technological advances into new products. To
achieve this function successfully, engineers need a sound technological background together with the
ability to communicate well with their co-workers. The latter aspect is often compounded by the fact that
engineers frequently are faced with the problem of explaining technical topics to people with very little
knowledge and understanding of engineering principles.
Despite the recognized importance of proper report writing, very little formal training exists in this field,
either in industry, or in university curricula. The lack of formal instruction could be traced to the widely
accepted philosophy that good report writing is a skill that can be acquired through practice and
determination. To achieve this goal, an engineer must be thoroughly familiar with the technical aspects of
the problem and also hold the ability to communicate his thoughts accurately.

The Elements of a Report

1. The Language

The author must always keep in mind the limitations of the readers of his work. If his message is well
understood, then the report is an unqualified success. The text may not be a literary showpiece but then
again this is not the goal of engineering writers. We are not advocating the proper grammatical construction
and style should be neglected. These aspects play a secondary role in assessing the effectiveness of a
technical report. To summary an old rule, in technical writing the message is the important thing and not the
medium.

2. The Introduction

How should the report be structured? Since the author needs to bring the reader into focus quickly, a report
should commence by a statement of the case being considered. This helps create the appropriate atmosphere
by repeating the terms and conditions which led to the investigation in the first place. Next, there should be a
brief outline of the process followed to arrive at the solution and a summary of the main conclusions
reached.

3. The Main Body

The core of the report should contain all the relevant details that were considered during the investigation. It
should discuss the background information necessary to the understanding of the problem, describe the
experimental set up used if measurements were taken, briefly describe what you did during experiment
(don’t copy the procedure in lab manual), present the data collected and show how this information was used
to perform whatever calculations were necessary. The main body is a detailed account of everything that
was done during the experiment. It should be extensive to the point that the solution to the problem becomes
obvious without actually stating it. For clarity of presentation, it is advisable to leave lengthy derivations or
complex arguments out of the main part of the report. These, if essential should be separate appendices.

4. The Concluding Remarks

The final section of the report sets out the solution to the problem defined in the introduction. It contains the
conclusions reached at the end of the investigation. It does not present new data. It simply restates the
arguments made in the main body of the report as conclusions. In effect the intent of this section is to
convince the reader that the original assignment has been successfully carried out. Not all assignments are
answered successfully. A good percentage of investigations fail either due to inadequacies of the
investigator or because the problem considered may not have a practical solution within the present
experimental set-up. Under such circumstances, the concluding section should contain an analysis of the
reasons which are responsible for the apparent failure of the assignment. These quasi-conclusions could be
employed to define the scope of a later investigation which will look into specific aspects of the problem,
and thus eventually arrive at a normal answer.

In summary the following format can be followed:

1. Introduction
2. Procedure
3. App diagram with schematic diagram
4. Specification
5. Observations and calculations (will all reading calculations)
6. Explanation of results and observations
7. Graphs with detailed discussion
8. Conclusion
9. Comments
10. References