General Notes on Report Formats for CH 463 & CH 463H Reports
General:
1. Double space all documents.
2. Spell check all documents.
3. Number all pages.
4. Tables and Figures: title and number all; cite this number in the text when referring the reader to the information.
5. Report results to the proper number of significant figures, estimate the confidence limit and give units.
6. Use accepted abbreviations only. Define abbreviations when necessary. Don't capitalize names of chemicals. You will have to edit this yourself since word processing programs are dumb.
7. Do not spend hours typing sample calculations. Give one neatly written example in the appendix or supplemental materials section. See number 5 and 6 above.
8. Be concise in answering the prevailing questions. Don't get bogged down in calculations without acknowledging the significance of the results. Explain the significance in concise chemical terms and rationalize the outcomes using basic chemical principles. Usually chemical phenomena you observe in the laboratory occur because of normal behavior or response to some well accepted principle that you have learned in chemistry lecture courses.
9. When submitting a report all charts should be oriented with the top of the chart on the left (binding edge.)
10. Try to make an educated guess as to why a result is not what is expected or why an error estimate is exaggerated.
11. When reporting values always use leading zeroes and proper significant figures with units.
12. Instruments can not analyze or do experiments - only people can! People can: prepare, synthesize, analyze, calculate, determine, etc. Instruments can be used by people who then analyze, calculate.....etc.
13. Instruments are not machines. Instruments are used to make measurements; machines have motors and gears and do mechanical work.
Feedback/Critiques.
We will try to use standard proofreaders' marks when editing your papers. These are given in Appendix V of the ACS Style Guide. Plus:
ww = wrong word
C with a / through it = make lower case c
c = make upper case C
Notebooks.
Notebook pages will be collected weekly and graded. Please put your copies in your folder before leaving on Thursday.