What Makes an FLR "Formal"?
Whitfield School's Science Department’s Formal Laboratory
Report format is modeled after the format used in many colleges and universities
and is similar to what one might use for a scientific peer-review journal.
Unlike an informal report, which presupposes that the reader (i.e. the
teacher) already understands the experiment, the Formal Lab Report requires
a little role-play on the part of the students. Students writing
a formal lab report must pretend that they are not writing a report that
is to be read by their teacher. They must write the report as though
it is to be read by a “fellow scientist,” someone who is generally knowledgeable
in this field, but who knows nothing about the particular experiment being
done until the student explains it.
This means that an FLR must not simply report on how an
experiment was done and what the results were, a Formal Lab Report must
also explain why the experiment was done, why it was done the way it was
done, and what the results mean.
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