Undergraduate reports and latex templates
There is no one template and style that fits all types of reports. This is a guide to writing better reports and developing your own style. Eventually the process of writing undergraduate laboratory and project reports is to be able to write a
scientific or technical paper
Here are some guides you might want to follow
Common mistakes
- Too large margins
- Heavy template for a short report (book style for a laboratory report)
- Wikipedia/web figures which are not accurate or important (better make your own)
- Avoid words you do not understand the meaning of.... simpler is always better
- Be careful of technical words and understand their meaning
- Avoid irrelevant introductory material
- Concentrate on the set problem and try to do that as well as possible, don't expand until you are confident the main parts are complete
Latex style problems
- Don't start a new paragraph after every equation or figure (don't put a space)
- Define all symbols
- Always add units
- Refer to all figures or pictures
- Be careful of text in equations {\rm text}
- Proper words in equations should not be in italic for example I_{max} compared with I_{\rm max}
Laboratory report
These need the following
- Abstract (Short as possible, include results!)
- What was measured?
- Why it was measured?
- How it was measured?
- What were the results?
- Comparison with existing results/analyses
- Introduction
- Physics background
- Explanation of the measurement (should be sufficient for another to reproduce the measurement)
- Apparatus (Diagrams here are very useful)
- Measurement (Explanation of error/uncertainty determination)
- Data analysis (Typically propagation of errors)
- Explanation of the results
- Summary and conclusion ( include final results)
- What can be explained by the measurement?
- Problems with the measurement
- What can be done to extend the measurement?
- Comparision with existing values
- References
Project/research review
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StewartBoogert - 25 May 2013