Lab Reports

Five of the laboratories will require a complete written report. The reports are to be turned in on WebAssign in MS Word format. Each report is due at the beginning of the following laboratory.

While you will work together in the laboratory, at its end, each student will have an individual record of the experiment, and will use this record to write a personal laboratory report. The lab report is absolutely not a team or joint project. You should have the same data as your partner, but its interpretation should be your own, and anything written about it must express your own ideas and be in your own words. If you include any materials prepared by another team member, the report must show who is responsible. Failure to give proper attribution is plagiarism, an honor violation. More information on the department-wide policy on plagiarism is given below.

The manual gives good advice on what to do and to avoid when writing a report. A report should be complete, but not excessively wordy, and should avoid repetition and overgeneralization. When writing the discussion, be aware that it is impossible to prove anything using an experiment. You can only confirm agreement with a theory within the precision of your experiment. The discussion should show whether the agreement was within reason for your procedures, based on an estimate of the errors in the data you acquired. The sources of the errors should be discussed. If you do not agree with the theory, you should discuss possible reasons, and make suggestions for improving the measurements. If your grades on laboratory reports are unsatisfactory and you do not understand why, be sure to schedule an appointment to discuss this in detail, and bring your reports to the meeting. If English skills are a problem, you may also wish to contact the Citadel Writing and Learning Center. See www.citadelwritingandlearning.com.

Laboratories that do not require a complete report will require a data analysis sheet. This normally consists of the Excel worksheet produced during the laboratory session, including any graphs made. There will normally be at least one question in WebAssign to test your understanding of your results. Typically, these questions may have the form:

• Did your results agree with the expected results within the bounds of experimental error? Justify your conclusion.
• What main sources of error influenced your result, and can you estimate the size of these errors? Could you have done anything better to reduce the errors?

Plagiarism Policy

As noted above, failure to adequately cite the origin of materials you turn in, even if it is due to your partner, is plagiarism, and subject to the Citadel's honor code. If in doubt, ask before submitting your work, but it is always safest to clearly show who made each contribution. The Physics Department policy on plagiarism in regard to laboratory reports may be found in the following PDF document.