Department of Physics

Report writing guidelines

This document outlines general guidelines on preparing reports for laboratory and computer projects at Levels 1 to 3. Supplementary information particular to certain activities may be given by the laboratory leader.  Students with visual impairment or other difficulties should consult their laboratory supervisor.

downloads

Available to download below are a number of files to help you produce laboratory reports that conform to the guidelines. It is recommended that you save them all to a single folder in your filespace. The file sample_2003.doc is a Microsoft Word template for Word 2003 and previous versions of Word, while sample_2007.docx is for Word 2007 and later versions; latex.zip is a zip folder containing five files including sample.tex which is a LaTeX template: using pdflatex (e.g. on altair) together with the figure files produces the pdf output sample.pdf. The LaTeX template assumes that you also have the revtex style files; all the necessary information about these, including the download, can be found at http://publish.aps.org/revtex/.

downloads

The LaTeX package is available on the CIS network, see http://www.dur.ac.uk/its/software/tex/texresources/ (login to say altair and type latex sample.tex) or for a free PC version go to MikTeX http://miktex.org.

Available below is a model lab report, to give you an example of what to aim at.  The experiment written up for this example is one of the Level 1 'Skills' experiments, not one of those that you will be asked to write up.  Nonetheless, this document should give you a good idea of the content, structure and presentation we would expect from an excellent Level 1 Discovery report.  Please note, however, that reports that do not strictly follow the example may still get top marks – this document merely shows what an excellent report might look like.

Graphical Excellence

There is a departmental Prize for Graphical Excellence in reports.  £100 will be allocated at each Laboratory Level with nominations made by markers.  In Level 1 the reports submitted by students doing Discovery Skills are eligible; in Level 2 the Skills and Long Experiment reports will be considered; and in Level 3 the computing, laboratory and team-project reports will be considered.

The prize will be awarded to the optimal presentation of quantitative data to best illustrate a particular physical phenomenon. Optimal presentation should include appropriate choice of data, theory, axis scaling and labelling, and aesthetic value, and may include innovative plotting ideas and originality.

An example of data visualization from the Level 2 laboratory is shown here

The python codes used to generate the figures are