Lab Write-up Guidelines for Chemistry
1. Your name and section must be clearly written on the top of the work.
2. All work should be typed or neatly written.

Pre-Lab: Read the entire lab and prepare the appropriate prelab before coming into class. Do not rewrite your prelab unless asked to by your teacher. Students with no pre-lab will not be able to do the lab and must make it up in their own time.

1) Title of Lab and date, and your lab partners' names.
The title should be bold and stand out. Date and partners can be a header(if using Word)

2) Purpose:
Explain what the goal/purpose of the lab is.
What is the question you are trying to answer in this lab?
You may need to include some basic science facts to help your audience understand the purpose. E.g. Explaining the physical properties of salt and sand will help explain why you added water to the mixture.

3) Chemicals:
A brief list of the chemicals used in the lab.

4) Procedure:
A brief numbered step-by-step procedure you will follow.
The procedure should allow others to replicate your experiment.
If your experiment has controls then this should be explained in your procedure.
Explain how the independent variable is isolated and how the other variables are controlled. Specific safety concerns should be identified. Replications should be planned.

E.g.

1. Add just enough distilled water to the sand and salt so that all the salt dissolves
2. Set up filter paper in a funnel so that the dissolved salt is collected in a flask.
3. Set up a evaporating dish to boil off the water and ........
4.
5.

etc......

5) Data Table:
Draw up a data table to collect your results (use a ruler or create a table in word).
The table should have a title, columns and rows should be labelled.
Make sure to include the units you are measuring in.
The data table should be designed after you have read the lab instructions.
A well designed data table will not need to be redone after the lab.

Your prelab will be stamped and should be stapled to the back of your final lab write up.

Formal Lab-Write up:
You can alter your purpose, procedure and data table if you discover they were not adequate are completing the lab.

5a) Data table Results:
Fill in your data table on the day of the experiment. The values in the table must have units. You should include a computer generated graph of your data when applicable.
Additional observations or changes to procedure noted and explained.

6) Calculations:
If your lab involves any kind of calcuation, you need to show one sample calculation for each type of calculation. Label what you are calculating. ie:

Calculation of density
D =m/V
D =(1.00g)/(2.00ml)
D =0.05g/ml

Percent error calculations

7) Discussion:
Experiment and results are summarized with reference to any hypothesis. Errors that affected the results are identified & discussed. When applicable calculate the percent error (show calculation)
What did you learn and do your results make sense? Suggest specific improvements to make the lab more accurate. Answer any questions in the lab handout as well.

8) Conclusion Questions:
Sometimes you will be given conclusion questions to help guide your thinking. Use these questions to help write your discussion.
You should try to write more than one sentence per question.