Reading & Writing
Reading and writing play an important role in conducting experiments and research. In order to solve problems by doing experience, a great deal of knowledge and context must be known about the topic in order to fully understand and solve problems. A skill to achieve good research is interpreting and understanding scholarly articles. There are several different resources and databases that contain scholarly articles about almost any topic in science. Among these scholarly articles, there are papers and reports on experiments performed on various topics that could aid in information on the topic of your interests by providing previous test, experiments, and data that has already been completed.
Along with being able to read profiencly and break down complex scholarly information, writing lab reports and abstracts is important in research as well. Once a research project is completed, you may want to display your work for others to see your work and progress. In doing so, there must be an elaborate document, or lab report, that shows not only the results of the experiment, but the methods used to get the data as well as any pre information gathered to help develop hypothesis or any part of the scientific method. These lab reports are written in a formal manner are follow a standard set up.
Main components of a lab report
1. Abstract- a brief overview of the information presented in the lab report that explains the topic being examined, hypothesis, methods, data and conclusion.
2. Introduction- Background information on the topic being experimented
3. Materials and Methods- the tools used to carry out the experiment and the procedure used to perform the experiment
4. Data- figures, images, tables, charts, graphs, and etc containing any qualitative data collected
5. Results- Verbal statements of the data collected
6. Discussion- Explaining what the data means and how any errors that could have taken place within the experiment.
7. Conclusion- A brief summary of the topic, experiment, data collected, and an overall