Egg White Lab: Description and Report Requirements
Prior to the start of this lab your instructor will review the chemistry lab safety requirements. You will be expected to follow these requirements while performing the lab.
The specifics of the lab will be described to you orally by your instructor. One of the goals of this lab is to have you produce a lab procedure/report that contains all the essential components as listed below. Keep in mind that you should provide enough detail in the Chemicals and Equipment and Procedure sections that you could hand these sections to a classmate who did not get the oral directions for how to perform the lab and your classmate could successfully perform this experiment with no additional information. Some of the descriptions associated with each section in the lab (procedure, analysis, etc.) may not apply to this particular lab.
Title
A title allows someone looking at it to instantly understand what the lab is about. The title for this lab is “Effect of Concentrated Acids and Bases on Egg White”.
Purpose (also may be labeled Objective or Hypothesis)
A brief statement of the purpose or purposes of the experiment or what you intend to prove test by performing the experiment. For this lab, the purpose will be the same for everyone: “To investigate the effect of various concentrated acids and bases on egg white”. If you want to try stating this as a hypothesis, you might try something like “My hypothesis is that the chemicals will cause a noticeable change in the egg white”.
Chemicals and Equipment (also may be labeled as Materials)
A listing of the required materials - see page 92 of your textbook for an example. Be as specific as possible and make sure to include any safety equipment that may be needed.
Procedure
Because this exercise is partly about getting you to write a laboratory procedure (instructions for performing an experiment), it will differ in style and format from the procedure section in a typical lab report. You need to write a step-by-step description of how the experiment is to be conducted – see page 92 of your textbook for an example. Note that the example is in the form of directions, not a recital of what was done (first we poured DI water into a beaker, then we …). Do not include any observations and/or results within the procedure.
Data/Observations
A description of what happened when you followed the procedure. Tables, photos and graphs may be included where appropriate. Tables are definitely preferred over narrative sentences Make sure everything is well organized and labeled. Do not include any conclusions about these observations in this section.
Analysis and Conclusions
This is where you describe what the data has “told you”. You may have to manipulate the data in some way (i.e., find the slope of a line, compare trends in one category versus some other category, etc.) to draw conclusions. You should only draw conclusions based on what you actually observe or obtain from analysis of your data, not on what you thought you were supposed to observe or what you would have liked to observe. If appropriate, you would state whether or not your hypothesis was supported by the experiment.
If there are known or suspected deficiencies in the equipment or procedure, they should be described. If the lab involved quantitative measurements and results, you would also include a quantitative error analysis.
Discussion / Suggestions for Further Work
Virtually all experiments leave unanswered questions or have impact on what is already known or what might be known “if only such and such could be proven tested”. This is where topics like this are typically addressed. You might suggest how to improve or extend these experiments. In this section you are allowed to speculate on what your results might mean.
References
If you’ve referred to any external work within the report, the specific references should be listed.
Reminders: (see page 5 of the Course Requirements document for further details)
1. Make sure to include the names of your lab partners on the report.
2. Even though the lab is performed in groups and so the data and observations should be common to all group members, the remainder of the report should be individual work.
3. The report must be neatly hand-written or typed and taped (not stapled) in your lab book.
Scientific Writing
The general style of writing you will be using for lab reports is called expository (fact telling) writing. Compare this style to others styles in the graphic below (from
http://www.kidskonnect.com/subjectindex/20-educational/language-arts/350-writing-styles.html).
The actual style used in most scientific communications is a very concise version of expository that minimizes repetition of ideas as much as possible. Whenever possible, it uses tables and graphs to convey information instead of words. The persuasive style of writing may be used in grant applications where the goal is to convince someone to fund your research.
Try to write as concisely as possible. In general, keep your writing dispassionate. Comments such as “I really liked this lab” or “I think we did a good job” can be made to your fellow students and/or the instructor, but they are not appropriate for a lab report.
Realize that the instructor is not really the “audience” when you are writing a lab report or other scientific communication. Your audience is really other scientists (aka the scientific community). Don’t assume that your audience knows what your classmates have done and discussed or what your instructor has said.
The standards of communication are those of science. For example, in writing an observation, you should ask yourself “What do you think another scientist would need to know if she or he were trying to gain a complete understanding about what you observed?” In providing evidence for a conclusion, ask yourself “What do you think another scientist would need to know in order for you to convince him or her that your conclusion is reasonable?”
C:\Users\Michael\Documents\Academy\Chemistry\Labs\Egg White Lab Students.doc