Lab Notebooks - WSU-Physics/phys340 GitHub Wiki

Grading of Laboratory Notebooks To help understand what a notebook should be like take a look at this example. Though as we noted in class, there are a few things that are NOT best practices, like the use of a pencil. A person should really use a pen when using a analog notebook. For comparison, here is the associated lab manual entry for the example lab notebook.

Here is an example OSF project you may use as a template for you lab notebook

A laboratory notebook must be a stand-alone record of the entire experiment, including any prelab work, setup, data acquisition, analysis and conclusions (note, you may also want to use the first page in your lab notebook for a table of contents so that quick reference to the various experiments may be possible). A reasonably knowledgeable physicist should be able to reproduce all aspects of the experiment, including data analysis, from your notebook alone with no reliance on the lab handouts. There should be no ambiguity about any aspect of the experiment, since everything will be carefully documented.

Your instructors will take into account many of the following factors in grading your lab notebook. For more details, you should see the section "Data Collection and Analysis" that is included in this lab manual. In assessing your notebook, you should ask yourself some the following questions:

How neat is the notebook? While neatness is not the primary goal, a well-organized and neatly written notebook (or typed in OSF) is much easier to understand and grade than one that is illegible or poorly organized. Points will be deducted if the organization or legibility of the notebook significantly detracts from the goal of a laboratory notebook, which is to serve as a complete, accurate and reproducible record of an experiment. Is the English grammatical, concise, and free from misspellings? While "perfect" English is not a primary goal of a laboratory notebook, spelling or grammatical errors represent habits can easily carry over to the public and formal writing, both for a specific assignment, and in general. These kinds of errors can significantly detract from the overall quality of the notebook, and will result in some reduction in the numerical grade assigned to that experiment. Is the notebook a chronological record? The notebook is to be a chronological record of everything that you did on the experiment. This means that you should treat each page as finished when you get to the bottom (or section in the OSF), and not operate as if you expect to return to make changes in the record of events. Going back and writing on an earlier page of a notebook should be a rare event, and clearly noted as a later entry, with date and explanation. Never leave blank pages or large sections of a page blank. Similarly, if you will upload an image to the OSF later, make note of what will go there (ideally the picture name). If you make temporary attachments of graphs or printouts, size them accordingly. How complete is the notebook? Could a reader, with access to the same facilities, reproduce the experiment and analysis solely from the notebook, without any lab handouts or hints from you? Are there sufficient descriptions of the setup used? All important details (schematics, descriptions, etc.) should be included. Include model and serial numbers for important pieces of equipment. These are not as important for "generic" items such as oscilloscopes or DMM's, unless the experiment requires a particular model, such as for computer interfacing labs. Software versions should be cited the first time they are used. Is the data acquisition technique adequately explained? Is it clear how the apparatus was used and how every measurement was performed? Unless these are "obvious" there should be notes on how everything was done the first time. However, repetitious statements of procedural detail should be replaced by references or summarizing comments. While "better late than never" is marginally acceptable, it is strongly preferable to document all of this while you are in the lab rather than write it up at the end of the experiment. Your instructors will be looking over your shoulder during the lab to check how you are doing with this. How well is the data analysis explained? Are the error propagation techniques clear and accurate? Are reasons given for choices? Is the fitting technique described and are all the fit parameters, with errors, included? Does the precision with which numerical values are stated reflect the conditions under which they were acquired? Are all plots and computer printouts firmly attached (taped or glued) into the notebook in a way such that each sheet is visible, but does not extend beyond the edge of the notebook? For OSF, figures should be uploaded, and then linked into the wiki pages directly where you are descriving the results. Are photo-graphed pages/plots uploaded to OSF legible? Avoid staples in notebooks, and do not overlay multiple sheets on a page. Are there captions and labeled axes on all graphs, so that it is clear what each graph is and what is being plotted? Are the plots and computer printouts legibly printed using a high-quality laser or inkjet printer? Is the font for plots and printouts 12-point or larger? Is all analysis requested in the lab handout complete and are all the questions asked in lab handout discussed? Have you addressed all the "show in your notebook" sections? Does the experiment have a conclusion section where the entire experiment and the results are discussed? This should include a discussion of the major limiting factors affecting the results, and the changes that could be made to improve the accuracy? Do not include a "laundry list" of such items. You should carefully discuss how each item could affect the results, both qualitatively and quantitatively. For example: If the coils were misaligned in the e/m experiment, would the ambient magnetic field affect the value of the e/m found by the experiment? If the misalignment were on the order of a few degrees, how much would this change the estimate for the ambient magnetic field, and would this account for the difference between your measurement and the accepted value? Laboratory Notebook Checklist Always Think. Internalize. What is the main idea of what you are doing? Do you clearly understand what is going on? Have you developed any unique insights not included in the lab instructions? Does the notebook illustrate these facts!?! Assume the reader of your lab book does not have the lab manual. Do NOT copy the lab manual. Use pen! Make a mistake? Cross it out, so it is still legible, and record the date when you made the mistake. You may learn it was correct later on! In Lab Be sure to include a brief summary statement at the beginning of each part about what you are trying to accomplish in that section. Why are you doing it? Describe how you made measurements. Include in your notebook those things that are important / necessary to be included. Do not include trivial details. Use and state uncertainties for all measurements, and make clear how uncertainties were obtained. Do simple calculations / analyses as they arise during the lab. Don’t save it all until the end as this will aid you in finding mistakes immediately. If the analysis is more lengthy, then reference the fact that it will be included later in the notebook (include a page reference in your notebook once you have completed it). Graphs/diagrams should have captions that allow them to stand on their own: i.e. they should contain enough info to allow the reader to correctly identify their significance. No graph / diagram titles are necessary. The caption to a graph or printout generated on the computer should clearly give the filename of the data or VI file being printed (including the directory path). Include settings for unusual or non-standard instruments. If using a program/equations or other info previously discussed in the lab notebook, then provide a page reference. Include at least one graph / example of raw data. Don’t just include processed data in the notebook. Programs must be documented and formatted to be easy to read and understand. Post Lab Documentation of analysis is as important as documentation of in-lab work! Be sure to provide detailed annotation for any Mathcad sheets that you include – include comments what is being done and why, not just a collection of equations. For Sage/Excel/Loggerpro/Python/Plotly/Matlab analysis, carefully describe the analysis details (what, if any transformations were made prior to fitting, what errors were used and why. Document the units of the X and Y variables, and the fitted parameters) After conducting your own analysis check your results with your lab partner. If you use the same data then you should have the same results or you should clearly understand why they are different. Box important and / or final results. Properly cite sources. Comment on results. Do not just state the results - briefly discuss their significance. Are the results expected? Why/why not? If a result is in significant disagreement with an accepted value make a quantitative hypothesis as to why this is the case. Don’t just include a list of possible errors – back these up with quantitiative estimates. Be quantitative. Comments like, “the agreement is good / close” are meaningless. All “accepted values” must come from up-to-date primary sources (such as the CODATA web site http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Constants/) not textbooks, lab handouts, etc.