In PH 411 your final grade is largely determined by the seven lab reports you submit. However, many of these reports consist largely just quality(!) figures and/or tables with descriptive captions.
More complete reports are occasionally required, please PH 411 REPORT GUIDLINES (.pdf) for details.
Written communication is an extremely important part of science. It is a vehicle to teach others and to demonstrate your understanding and synthesis of a topic. If you write something carefully, you will uncover your own questions and learn in the process. Practice with every homework assignment. Practice with every lab write-up. Your written work should be something that you would be proud to present to a peer as a cogent explanation of the assigned problem. It should be something that you would be able to follow easily if you had no knowledge from the present class. Learn to comment, explain, analyze, teach, and synthesize in your written work.
| Graphing Software [all free for 411 students] | |
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| MS Excel | EVERYONE in 411 must use Excel as part of data acquistion. [i.e. use it to organize your data] For graphing, Excel can be awkward. We can help you with Excel graphing. |
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The interface of this program is very intuitive, and looks like Excel. SciDavis is the 'free version' of a popular program called OriginLab. Free 6-mo student licenses are available of these. For MAC users, GraphPad Prism is a better choice. |
| LabPlot | Free high-level graphing software that requires minimal coding. Slightly more difficult than SciDavis, but easier than MatPlotLib |
| MatLab or MatPlotLib |
[Coding baded] Do NOT USE these unless you are already farmilar (or an experience coder) Your tuition helps buy you a license MatLab. But MatPlotLib is free and python based (similar to OSU physics computiong courses). |
* I do NOT recommend usinng Mathematica (or Maple) as your primary graphing tool for experimental physics. It is designed for analysis, and graphs of theoretical data in mind.
QUESTION: Can't you just give me a template and tell me what you want?
ANSWER: In short, no! Organizing your text and figures well is the greatest challenge. Now that you've written 'lab reports' in other classes, we are leaving the hard part up to you!
Scientific writing is a complex, creative and abstract process; the best template is the one that sells your scientific message clearly and succintly. In the real world, there exists no such templates; you will be expected to choose how to communicate your science best.
Six Things you should NEVER do in PH 411 lab report figures:
1) Copy either figure or table from someone else (even from your lab partner*).
This course heavily evaluates YOUR ability to acquire, assemble and pressent experimental data. Data theft in science if FAR more serious than plagarism and will treated as such.
2) No caption for a figure or table.
Captions should below and figure, and are often several sentences long; and can even have multiple panels (Figure 1: (a) ..... (b) ....... (c) .........).
3) Place a title above your figure. Don't do this bad habit from high-school labs.
You place title above a figure in a powerpoint presentation, but in a report the caption always plays this role.
4) Poor quality or poorly labelled figures. Making figures is an artform, we're here to help!
5) Use 'educational' graphing software (e.g. DESMOS, graphing calculator). We can always tell!
Your training to be a professional, we expect to know how to produce a graph in professional software. MS Excel is perfectly sufficient at this level, but there are many even better options listed above.
6) Put screenshots or photos in your report. UNLESS:
(i) Photographs of oscilloscope screens are generally permitted as they are 'raw data'.
Oscilloscope all output screen data to Excel, generally this graph is better than screenshot. But either is OK.
(ii) Photographs of your circuits are ok to include, but unecessary as you'll have a circuit diagram. Photos are a GREAT WAY to document your progess, but are never a subsititue for quantitative graph or circuit diagram.
* It is great idea to take data, and even prepare all preliminary data with your partner or friend. If your partner shares a great figure, use it as inspiration to make your own version. If you're really short on time, it occassionally acceptable to modify your partner's figure with their permission (but no carbon copies ever!). In this case you must clearly credit your source. Making a clear, original caption is also critical.
| Resources: OSU and Beyond | |
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| OSU Writing Intensive Course (WIC) http://wic.oregonstate.edu/ |
Many helpful items, including, for example, a list of the most common writing errors and how to correct them. |