General Guidelines for the FLR

Keep the following guidelines in mind as you work on the report:

These are reports, they are used for telling someone else about something which has already occurred, so they are written in the past tense.

These reports are about the experiment and its outcome. They are not about you, your lab partners, or the equipment. Lab reports must be written entirely in the passive voice. This structure allows you to discuss the procedure and outcome without any reference to yourself or any other individual.

Lab reports are not directions, they should not be written as if you are telling the reader how to do the lab. Although, they must contain enough information that a reader could reproduce the experiment if desired.

When writing the report, pretend that you are a scientist and that your audience is other scientists. You can assume that your reader has a strong background in mathematics, understands the fundamental concepts of science (biology, chemistry, or physics) and is familiar with the concept of data collection (qualitative and quantitative). However, your reader does not know any of the particular details of the experiment until you make them clear. Be careful not to use terms or ideas you have not already explained (unless they are generally known).