Title, Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, References

January 2011 Guidelines for Lab Report

Your lab report needs to have a title and needs to be organized into the following sections: Title, Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, References

General Comments:  Keep your writing impersonal; use third person past tense. Avoid using I and We  Pay attention to grammar and punctuation and divide paragraphs correctly.

Some Suggestions for the Introduction:

 What knowledge already exists about this subject, and what needs to be addressed in order to understand the rest of the report (What is a hydrate? Be specific & detailed! How is a hydrate formed? What does anhydrous mean? How does a hydrate become anhydrous? What is the balanced equation studied in this lab? Explain what is meant by percent composition of water in a hydrate. How is percent composition calculated? ).  State the objectives or purpose of the experiment.

Material and Method:  This section is to be written in paragraph form  Briefly describe the experimental procedure and equipment that you used.

Results:  Three tables (labeled w/ a title): Table 1 (mass of beaker; mass of dish + hydrate; mass 1 of beaker + anhydrous salt; mass 2 of beaker + anhydrous salt…); Table 2 (mass of hydrate; mass of salt; mass of water); Table 3: (moles of salt; moles of water; percent composition)  Calculations to determine how many moles of water are in the hydrate.  CALCULATIONS for the PERCENT COMPOSITION of water. Just calculate the percent composition for the correct hydrate

Some suggestions for the Discussion  Include an interpretation of your results. Make sure to indicate which hydrate you determined your sample to be experimentally (aka how many waters are attached) and how this was determined. What is the known hydrate?  Explain: What happened as you heated the sample? (Talk about both the color change and what has happening on the molecular-level) What do you think would happen if water is added to a sample of the anhydrous copper(II) sulfate?  Also, explain what your %composition value means.  Discuss possible procedural errors and improvements that can be made to the procedure to avoid them.  Does your data support your hypothesis?  Were the objectives of the experiment met?

References List all your resources (books used, data tables, web sites consulted) that you used in writing the introduction and discussion and cite your references using the APA guidelines. (Minimum = 3)