Why lab reports?
No experiment is a complete waste. It can always be used as a bad example. But, if the experiment is not reported, or the report is unintelligible, even the most brilliant experiment was a complete waste. If you can’t stop a passerby on the street and explain your experiment then you don’t really understand it yourself. Most students and many professionals would prefer a root canal to sitting down to write a report on an experiment. Many teachers feel that time spent in report writing is time taken away from the experiment. “The students can learn about report writing in a later course.” In contrast to some of these views I feel it is never too early to start learning about reporting results; in fact reporting is an integral part of doing and learning from an experiment. • First, if report writing is put off until “some later course” the student may never be forced to learn how to write reports at all! • Second, it is probable that the student doesn’t really understand the experiment i
