LABORATORY REPORT

The laboratory report should be written in a short-form format. Each laboratory

report must contain the following sections: Title, Author, Abstract,
Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion and References (Results and
Discussion can be combined in a single section). The laboratory report must
have an abstract of no more than 100 words. The text for the other sections
(including references) should be kept to a minimum and should not exceed 1000
words; the student may or may not use figures/tables (the number should be kept
to a minimum of two).

Please make sure that you create a report that is well formatted, presentable and
neat (e.g. the font type, font style, font size, paragraph alignment and line
spacing are consistent). Also remember that you have access to computing at
the College Computing Center (CCC). The due date for each laboratory report is
in the syllabus (email the report to gcalendaoffermann@bmcc.cuny.edu).

If you need tutorial with a writing professional, you can seek help at the Writing
Center (room S-510).

Title

A good title has the fewest possible words to describe the contents of the
laboratory report. Things to avoid:

• The title is too long (It may deter potential readers and mislead)

• The title is too short (Although a “snappy” title can attract readers, it may cut
important information and mislead)

• Abbreviations or jargon Abstract Concisely summarize the content of the

laboratory report (do not include extensive experimental details). Avoid
abbreviations and do not use diagrams/figures/tables. Limit the abstract to
100 words or less. The abstract should be written in the past tense. The
abstract is a ”mini-version” of the full report and may include in the
paragraph the following information: objective of the laboratory, design,
results and conclusions. Introduction This section provides background
information to understand and evaluate the results. The introduction
should always provide at the end the hypothesis that was addressed or
the rationale for the experiment performed in the laboratory. The student
 may cite few references that provide the most relevant background. This is
not a comprehensive review of the topic. Methods This section should
include sufficient technical information so that the reader can repeat the
experiments. The student needs to describe the methods completely,
including details like chemicals, equipment, microbial strains (remember
the rules on how to write scientific names!), incubation times, temperature,
growth medium, etc. All materials and methods should be always
described in this section, and never in figure legends or table footnotes
that belong to the Results and Discussion section. Do not use bullets to
describe/mention materials and methods. Results and Discussion The
student will include the rationale/design of the experiments and the
results. Present the results as briefly as possible. The student can use
text, table(s)/figure(s) (a maximum of two). Finally, include the
interpretation of the results and compare to what has been published in
the literature. References The laboratory textbook can be used as a
reference. MLA or APA style can be used to cite references. For more
information visit the following link: http://lib1.bmcc.cuny.edu/help/citations/