What is a report?

A lab report is intended to constitute a full account of an experiment. It has to be written as if it was going to be read by someone who has no prior knowledge of the experiment, but has some understanding of physics. Ideally, it could be read by anyone, and this person should be able to replicate the experiment in order to compare his results to yours. A formal lab report is similar to a scientific article. It has the same organization and serves the same purpose, report scientific results. It is therefore a technical paper, follow these guidelines in order to write your formal report.

Writing Style

The paper should be written impersonally.

• Don’t: “In this experiment, I have measured the acceleration due to gravity.”
• Do: “In this experiment, the acceleration due to gravity was measured.”

You must be quantitative, avoid qualitative statements.

• Don’t: “The measured value is quite similar to the theoretical value.”
• Do: “The measured value is 5% less than the theoretical value taken from reference (1).”