Assessment Task Information (In-College)

Key details:
Assessment title: Laboratory Report and Practical Skills
Module Name: Physics

Module Code: FC312

Tutor’s Name: Joao Medeiros/Utoor Hammodi

Assessment will be set on: w/c 6th May 2024

Feedback opportunities: feedback from class tutor before submission deadline.

Assessment is due on: 11th June 2024 Tuesday, 12noon.

Assessment weighting: 35%

Assessment Instructions
What do you need to do for this assessment?
This assessment is in two parts.
• Part 1 – Practical Skills
• Part 2 – Experiment and laboratory report
Part 1 Task:
You must complete two activities on the VLE
- A hazard identification video task
- A Health& Safety quiz

Part 2 Task:
This assessment is to test your ability to carry out an experiment, interpret the results and write a laboratory
report. You are required to plan and carry out an experiment. You should record your results and then write
a lab report for your tutor, detailing your methods, results, discussions, and conclusions. You
must describe any safety precautions that would be taken in a physical lab and list all steps taken to ensure
a fair test.

Experiment aim:

You will be expected to write a report on either Hooke’s Law or Ohm’s law experiment. Your class tutor
will assign this to you.

Guidance:
For this assessment you should make use of the following activities that you have already completed.
These activities have been designed to support this summative assessment:
• Tasks completed in AL- Lab week

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Please note:
This is an individual assessment so you should not work with any other student.

Your tutor will also ask for a draft copy of your report and provide feedback.

Structure:
Your lab report should contain the following sections:
• Introduction. You should give a brief overview of the main theories behind the experiment.
• Aim. Clearly state the aim of the experiment – what are you trying to determine?
• Theory. What is the background to this experiment? You need to provide relevant formula,
picture, graph to support the theory.
• Materials and methods. You should explain how the experiment was carried out. You should give
enough detail so that another person can repeat the experiment in the same way you did.
• Safety. Provide health and safety issues relevant to the experiment.
• Results. You must include all your results. Results tables should be clearly labelled. All
measurements must include units. If graphs are required, they should be an appropriate size and
clearly labelled.
• Errors. What may have affected your results? This section should include errors such as
systematic, parallax and human errors – ones that cannot be avoided.
• Discussion. You need to explain what your results mean. You should link your results to relevant
theories and explain how they fit together. You must use in-text citations where appropriate. Any
unexpected results should be explained.
• Conclusion. State what has been learned from this experiment. Have you met the aim of the
experiment?
• References. You should list all sources used.

Theory and/or task resources required for the assessment:

You should refer to the appropriate chapters in the key texts as well as the lecture materials for the topic
relevant to your experiment. You should also find relevant primary sources online using the online
resources provided by your host university.

Referencing style:
You should refer to a minimum of 5 relevant sources for your report. Minimum 2 sources should be
printed texts. You must include a Harvard style reference list at the end of your report.

Expected word count:

Your overall word count should be 1500-2000 words, excluding references.
In each section you should include around the following number of words:
• Introduction & Aim 300-500 words
• Materials and methods 300 words
• Results 200 words
• Discussion 500-600 words
• Conclusion & Errors 200 words

Learning Outcomes Assessed:

• Apply good laboratory practice to the conduct of experiments, and to measure, record and interpret
outcomes accurately using a lab report format

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Submission Requirements:
You must include the following paragraph on your title page:
I confirm that this assignment is my own work.
Where I have referred to academic sources, I have provided in-text citations and included the sources in
the final reference list.

You must type your assessment in Arial font 11, with single spacing.
You must submit the assessment electronically via the VLE module page. Please ensure you submit it
via Turnitin.

Assessments submitted after the submission deadline may incur penalties or may not be accepted.

Addition submission information – check you have done the following:

Formatting Consistent font, spacing, page numbers, formatting and subheadings

Citations Correct format and location throughout the report

Referencing Harvard referencing system used correctly in the reference list

Summarising Summarising the results of research

Paraphrasing Paraphrasing the contents of research findings

Spell check Spell check the report

Proof-reading Proof-reading completed

Grammar Grammarly has been used to check the report

How will this assessment be marked?

Lab Report – (80% of assessment score)

Experimental Procedure and Plan of experiment (10%)

We will be looking for:
• Clearly defined aim of experiment
• Appropriate theoretical context
• Hypothesis with reasons
• Clear explanation of method
• Complete list of all materials required and consideration of safety procedures
• A clear labelled diagram showing the equipment set-up
• Methodical practical skills (instructions followed correctly)

Results (15%)
We will be looking for:
• Good quality results with units.
• Recognition of outliers, repeat measurements to reduce uncertainty
• Equations, structural formulae.
• Correct mathematical manipulation in calculations, including units.
• Units on graph axes and/or table headings.
• Results quoted to correct accuracy and precision

Uncertainty & Errors (10%)

We will be looking for:
• Identification of errors and discrepancies
• Analysis of impact on results

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Discussion and Conclusion (30%)
This will mainly be found in the Introduction, Discussion and Conclusion sections.
We will be looking for:
• Clear explanation of the science underlying your observations.
• Interpretation of calculations and graphs.
• Explanations of all results.
• Well explained links between results and appropriate theories theory.
• Confirmation (or otherwise) of hypothesis and/or aims

Overall structure and quality of presentation (10%)

We will be looking for:
• Attractive, clear layout with title page, headings, sub-headings
• Neat, well laid-out tables with column headings.
• Neat graphs with titles, labelled axes and well-spaced, numbered scales.
• Correctly formatted chemical and mathematical equations
• Calculations that are well laid out and easy to follow.
• References correctly formatted and attributed
• Correct use of academic English

Academic integrity (5%)

• Information from sources is appropriately paraphrased/summarised rather than relying on quotes
• Any direct and indirect quotations are clearly marked and acknowledged with correct citations
• References match the citations and are correctly formatted
• Data/facts presented are genuine and accurate

Practical Skills – (20% of assessment score)

Practical task at the lab – (10%)
Health & Safety VLE quiz – (10%)

The overall mark will be a percentage (0-100%).

How will you get feedback?

Your tutor will mark the assessment and provide you with a written feedback sheet. You can use this
feedback to guide your further learning on the module.

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