Lab reports are a way to communicate the details of an experiment to a reader.  The basic format follows the scientific method.

We will use the IMRaD format.

IMRaD stands for:

Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion

Introduction: states your question or problem, your hypothesis and why you chose that hypothesis.  You should back up your hypothesis with some personal observations and referral to background on a topic.  Your textbook is a good source for background on many topics.

Materials and Methods: Here you write what you did in paragraph format.  Do not use a bulleted list of steps.  You can, however, list your materials in a bulleted list

Results: In this section you should state your raw data.  You should state what you found in your experiment, including your data table.  You may want to use graphs as well

Discussion: Here you refer back to your hypothesis.  Did your experiment support or refute your hypothesis?  Your experiment may also have been inconclusive.  Comment on any trends or patterns you saw in your data.  Finally, you should discuss any limitations in your method or mistakes that you made.  How would you redesign the experiment to fix these?

For more information on how to write a lab report, check out  my Lab Report Format

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