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

• University of Texas
• University of Leicester

• 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

• 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

-- StewartBoogert - 25 May 2013