Overview
TITLE
•For example: “Identifying an Unknown Compound”
• Include the date, your name and your lab partner’s name (please make sure it is clear who the lab partner is) below the title. ABSTRACT • One paragraph • Summarize the purpose, procedures, and results of the experiment. • For example: “The heat capacity of Mako (an unknown metal) was determined using constant pressure calorimetry. Two trials were performed, and the calculated average heat capacity of Mako was 0.31 J/(g C). • Introduction • Should include the objective of the experiment. • It should introduce and motivate the experiment, including any theory the experiment relies on. • For example: “An important chemical property is solubility, which is the ability to dissolve in a liquid. In this experiment the solubility of the unknown compound was tested. If more than 30 mg of the unknown can dissolve in a milliliter of solvent, then the unknown would be classified as soluble. If some of the unknown dissolves in the solvent while the rest does not, then the unknown would be considered slightly soluble.” • ALWAYS include any chemical reactions and formulas to be used in calculations. • For example: “Another way to identify an unknown substance is by its density. Density (d) is defined as mass (m) in grams divided by volume (V), in mL. d=m/v EXPERIMENT • Summarize the procedures of the experiment in your own words with enough detail for another general chemistry student to repeat your experiment and obtain similar results. Do not simply refer the reader to the lab manual. Your document alone should allow the reader to repeat the experiment. The text in this section (like the whole report) should be paragraphs, not numbered lists or bullet points).
RESULTS & DISCUSSION • Please include the table from your datasheet with the proper number of significant figures • Include any graphs needed to determine the main results of the experiment. • It should include any text necessary to understand how the data is organized (this could be captions for the tables) • Discuss anything unusual about the data. Do you think sometime went wrong with one of the trials. Did your trial produce very similar or very different results? If the results were very different discuss why. • CONCLUSION • Similar to the abstract, restate the objectives, summarize the procedure and include the main results of the experiment. • Discuss what you think was the largest source of error in your experiment. “Human error” is not an acceptable description, be specific. • Recommend one change in the way the experiment was performed that you think would significantly improve the quality of your data