(xx/100)
Sarah Eno, F09
Guidelines for Rubric.
The purpose of this courseÕs lab reports is to give you experience in technical writing. Almost any scientific career will require some sort of careful, well-organized, well-written documentation of your work and results. A research scientist in academia or industry will need to publish journal articles. Any person whose job is technical will need to write internal technical reports. Such documentation generally needs to conform to the requirements of the publisher or the company as well as to the expectations of its readers. It needs to describe the work in a clear, concise manner. The requirements for your lab reports are given below.
A typical lab report will be about 10 pages long, including tables and figures. The actual length will, of course, vary from experiment to experiments. Tables and Figures should be all together, at the end of the lab report.
1. General (8 points)
1.1. Is the lab report well-written? Is the English grammatically correct? Is it concise yet complete? Does it seem like something that is meant to be easy to read? Or is it just a spreadsheet pasted into word? (5 points) (x/5)
1.2. Are the tables and figures at the end of the document? Are they neat ? (3 points) (x/3)
2. Abstract and Introduction (5 points)
2.1. Is there an abstract? Does it concisely describe the purpose and results of the lab? (2 points) (x/2)
2.2. Is there an introduction that correctly describes the questions the laboratory is probing? Does the introduction concisely use both equations and text to describe the physics involved? Are the variables in the equations defined with text? Could a person who is a physics student but has not done the lab, and who is not your instructor, understand the purpose and importance of the lab from the introduction? (3 points) (x/3)
3. Equipment and procedure (9 points)
3.1. Is the equipment that was used described? (1 points) (x/1)
3.2. Is it described in enough correct but concise detail to understand the experiment? Are the model numbers included for any device used to take a measurement? Are any calibration constants included? (2 points) (x/2)
3.3. Are there appropriate, correct figures showing the experimental apparatus? (1 point) (x/1)
3.4. Are the experimental procedures that were used correctly described in language appropriate for a publication? (3 points) (x/3)
3.5. Are they described in enough detail to understand the experiment? (2 points) (x/2)
4. Data (32 points)
4.1. Are all the portions of the data needed to understand the analysis in the laboratory report as well as in the spreadsheet? If they are in tables, do the tables have captions? Are the tables neat? Does the table have a caption? Are the captions complete? Does the table have a table number? Is there at least one sentence in the text that refers to the table by number? Do all numbers that appear in the lab report have text that describes what the number is? (9 points) (Note: all raw data must be in the spreadsheet which is turned in at the end of the class period) (x/9)
4.2. Was the data taken carefully and accurately? (4 points) (x/4)
4.3. Are there errors associated with every measured number that is used in data analysis? Are the errors labeled as stat and/or syst? +- x (stat) +- x (syst) (3 points) (x/3)
4.4. Are the data quoted to the correct number of significant figures, given the error? Are the errors appropriately rounded so that they do not have more than 2 significant digits? Do all numbers have units? (1 point) (x/1)
4.5. Is the method used for obtaining the random and systematic error described? Is it described completely? (6 points) (x/6)
4.6. Are any required error propagations done? Are the equations that were used to do this given in the text? Are they done correctly? (3 points) (x/3)
4.7. Was the resulting error determined correctly, taking into account both random and systematic sources of error? (6 points) (x/6)
5. Data Analysis (20 points)
5.1. Is the data compared with theoretical calculations, and are all comparisons between data and theory that are requested in the lab manual done? Are the results discussed, with correct conclusions drawn? Were all the comparisons requested in the lab manual done? (15 points) (x/15)
5.2. Was the comparison done using an appropriate numeric test, like a chi squared test? Are the results of the numeric test discussed and appropriately used to reach a conclusion about physics? (5 points) (x/5)
6. Figures (11 points)
6.1. Are there appropriate figures illustrating both the data and the data analysis? (4 points) (x/4)
6.2. Are the figures clear, with appropriately chosen axes? Are the minimum and maximum values of x and y chosen so that the features on the plot can be clearly seen? Are the axes labeled and do they have units? (4 points) (x/4)
6.3. Do all the figures have figure captions? Are the captions complete? Is there at least 1 full sentence in the text that refers to the figure by figure number? (3 point) (x/3)
7. Conclusions (15 points)
7.1. Is there a separate conclusions section (at the end, not embedded in the rest of the text)? (2 points) (x/3)
7.2. Does it carefully summarize and discuss the results of the data analysis? If there are discrepancies between the data and the expected results, are these discussed in a correct and scientific manner? (9 points) (x/9)
7.3. Does the discussion correctly include both numerical results and qualitative information discussion? (3 points) (x/3)