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How to write a science

report

Science research articles

Percentage of IMRaD articles

Most primary research today is published in the IMRaD format

1930

1960
year

1990

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Modelling - why shouldnt I do it the same as it is

in the prac manual??
Prac manual

Science report

purpose

To instruct

To communicate findings
of research in a
professional manner

audience

students

Fellow scientists

Look at a research paper how do they present their results? What kind of information do they
include in a figure caption compared to the results text? What kind of language do they use to
describe certain phenomena? How do they format their work?
Use this as your model NOT your prac manual
Obviously copying someone's words and ideas directly is plagiarism this is NOT OK!

Introduction

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Introduction
Opening sentence/s
Background (research)
Aim/hypothesis/purpose

Generally introduce the topic

Flow of
information

Introduce your specific

research

Which is the best opening sentence for a research project which

investigated the effect of different coloured light on plant growth?
1. Plants are all around us.
2. Plants are essential for human survival.
3. Smith (1999) showed Elodea grew faster in less turbid water when
they could absorb more light.
4. Plants require light to power photosynthesis which promotes growth.
5. Did you know that plants need light for photosynthesis so they can
grow?

Write two or three keywords and use those in your first sentence

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Background
Has to set scene for the hypothesis/purpose
What research has been done before on this topic?
What information is missing that makes our experiment important?
Read some research articles on your topic you have one from the library
quiz & and there are more on cloud
Smith (1999) showed Elodea grew faster in less turbid water when they could
absorb more light. However it has not determined whether the particulate
matter in the water prohibited all wavelengths of light reaching the plant
equally

Aim/hypothesis/purpose
Should come at the end of the introduction
Should link directly to the background information
Smith (1999) showed Elodea grew faster in less turbid water when they could
absorb more light. However it has not determined whether the particulate
matter in the water prohibited all wavelengths of light reaching the plant
equally
The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of salinity of plants in turbid
water eh?!?!?
The aim of this study is to investigative if plants in turbid water grow differently
when exposed to different wavelengths of light

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Methods

Methods
Not writing instructions past tense account of what you did
How much detail? experiment needs to be repeatable

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Methods
Not appropriate:
active, instructive, informal

Appropriate:
passive, reporting, formal

Take one leaf from the growing

tip of the water weed Elodea
and mount it in a drop of water.
You will see that leaf comes to a
point at one end and that the
other end there is a jagged edge
where it has been removed from
the stem. Find a thin area of the
leaf where it is possible to see
several, clearly defined cells.

A water mount of an Elodea leaf

was created by placing a drop of
water onto a slide. In order to
observe specimens that were
metabolically active, leaves were
selected from the growing tip of
the plant. Once the leaf was
mounted on the slide a thin area of
the leaf where clearly defined cells
were visible was chosen for
observation.

Methods
Active, instructive, informal

passive, reporting, formal

2 ml of Neutral red is placed in a

test tube with one drop of basic
solution in water
2 ml neutral red is placed in a test
tube with one drop of an acidic
solution in water
Watch while your demonstrator adds
2 ml of relatively non-polar
chloroform to each tube. Each tube
is stoppered and allowed to settle

Two millilitres of Neutral red

(NR) was placed in test with one
drop of a basic solution (0.05 M
NaOH). NR (2 ml) was placed in a
second test tube with one drop
of acidic solution (0.01 M HCl).
Following this chloroform was
added to both tubes before they
were stoppered and finally
allowed to settle.

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Prac manual page 43

NOTE: we used two methods in this practical. For your report you
should write in full the method that you used to isolate your sample
and then refer to the prac manuals for the other method. For
example, if you used the Youtube method in class then write the
details of that method in full and then for the other method write
DNA was also extracted from strawberry and kiwi fruit using a salting
out technique according to the method of the Cell and Genes
Practical Manual (School of Life and Environmental Sciences (LES),
2016).

Results

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results
Written text
Focus on main trends or differences
Dont just write out the graph in words!
(For a separate results section) Only describe the results dont need to explain
or interpret in this section

Visual figure, table

Must include a caption

Results

Graph in written form Dont do this

At 20C, the seedling showed negligible growth for the first 8
days of study (fig 20). However, between days 8 and 16, the
average seedling grew nearly 5 mm, from about 8 mm to about
13 mm. Growth continued over the next 16 days, with the
seedlings reaching about height of 24 mm by day 24, and 30 mm
by day 32
Focus on the main features. Make a general statement and
then follow it up with more specific information.
Temperature had a pronounced effect on seedling
growth rates (fig 20). In particular, seedlings at 25 C
grew more rapidly that those at 20 C

Taken from Pechenik, 8th edition, 2005

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Results
30.0

Plant growth (mm)

Write the results text for this

graph
Dont forget the figure caption!

25.0
20.0
15.0
10.0
5.0
0.0
blue

red

white yellow green

Colour of light

orange purple

Growth of Elodea in turbid water under different wavelength

of light. Data represents the mean of 10 samples. Error bars
represent the standard deviation

Do we need a graph?
How can the result be best presented to the reader?
Is it qualitative or quantitative

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Discussion

Discussion
Clearly state if
aim/purpose/hypothesis was
achieved or not
Explain your results
Compare your results with
previous research
Limitations
Applications/recommendations
/suggestions for further
research.
Concluding paragraph

Your results

Flow of
information

Relate your results to the bigger picture

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Explaining & comparing results

Eg
In comparison to the method used by Smith and
colleagues (1999) our results showed that....
Smith et al (1999) showed that .whereas our
study showed..
This can be explained by
Its possible this was due to.

Discussion
How would you interpret the data?
What is/are the limitations of your
conclusion?
What further research would you
suggest?
It appears that sweeteners, in particular artificial
sweeteners, are large drivers of the mentos/coke
reaction (fig. 1). However, this conclusion is
confounded by the use of liquids with several
differing ingredients. In the future repeating this
experiment with a single sugar or artificial
sweetener dissolved in carbonated water would
help to confirm this result.
Underline text = limitation

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References using reliable sources of

information
Use the Harvard style
Use reliable sources of information
Whats reliable??????
Rank from most reliable to least; newspaper article, Wikipedia,
ask.com, website.edu(.au), website.gov(.au), science research article,
science textbook, websites such as scitable, company websites
It can be hard to make a judgement about whether a website is reliable or not governments and
companies may have agendas (but in some circumstances the information might be ok). Ultimately it is
better to stick with research articles and textbooks as these have already been reviewed by people
knowledgeable in the field

http://www.nature.com/scitable

Resources
Unit site resources
Research articles on DNA
extraction
Animations
Original YouTube DNA extraction
video
Rubric available

Study support writing mentor

and language & learning tutor
http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/stud
y-support/ask-us
They are not an editing service!

Multiple copies available in the

library

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