PLEASE HELP ME IF YOU DONE THIS BEFORE Part 1: Introduction Title
Title your lab report with a few words that
summarize the lab investigation
Purpose
The lab report should begin with one or two
sentences that state the purpose of the
investigation what you want to see, practice, loam
about, or test. The purpose statement answers the
question "What am I trying to find out by doing this
experiment?"
The three most common types of labs are:
inquiry labs, in which you measure how
changing one variable affects another variable
discovery labs, in which you observe a scientific
phenomenon, perhaps for the first time.
forensic labs, in which you gather and analyze
data as evidence to build an argument in
response to a question, as in a court case,
All three types of labs give you an opportunity to
learn important scientific skills and concepts.
Question
At its core, science is about inquiry, or the act of
asking questions and seeking answers. Most labs
begin as the result of a question, which is why the
introduction of your lab report should include a
question. For example, suppose you notice that you
seem to play basketball better at the court in one
park than in another. After conducting research, you
realize that one of the surfaces of the court at the
park is different from that of your driveway. As a
result, you might formulate the scientific question
"What effect does the court surface have on the
height that the basketball bounces?" To answer this
question scientifically, you could perform several
experiments and gather data,
Hypothesis (or Prediction)
A hypothesis is an initial answer to a question, a
possible explanation or expectation based on prior
knowledge or research. Before starting most lábs,
you will formulate a hypothesis. It should be listed in
the introduction of your tab report
A good scientific hypothesis states conditions,
expected results, and possible reasons for those
results, For example, you could respond to the
basketball question with a hypothesis like "If the
court surface is smooth concreto, as the park's
court is, then the basketball will bounce higher,
because smooth surfaces have better contact with
the ball." Like this hypothesis, hypotheses are often
structured using the format "il then, because
which is described below.
The "it' portion of the hypothesis describes
something that you will change in the experiment
• The "then" portion of the hypothesis describes
what you think will happen as a result of that
change
• The "because" portion of the hypothesis
describes the ason why you think that change
will occur
In other laboratory activities you will be asked to
make a prediction. You will conduct background
research, then predict the outcome of a known
scientific process
Special Note about inquiry Labs
For inquiry labs, questions are generally
written in the form of "What is the effect of X on
Y?" Hypotheses will generally be in the form of
X [describe how you will change X during the
experiment), then Y will predict how y will
change in response), because give your
reason." In many inquiry labs the variables
lend themselves to a scatterplot (X-Y plot)