To perform these tasks properly, you must keep an accurate laboratory notebook, describing exactly how you performed an experiment and exactly what results you obtained. Without such a record it is unlikely that you will remember accurately what you did and found, and it is possible that you or others interested in the experiment may not be able to reproduce the original results, making it impossible to use those results as a guide for further experiments. The only way to keep a good laboratory notebook is to record your methods and results in the laboratory, while you are performing an experiment. Your notebook will be collected on a regular basis and be evaluated for completeness and legibility, and you will be given suggestions for improvement, if needed. If recopying or summarizing helps you understand what you did, you may do so, but you must hand in for evaluation your original in-lab notes.
All good scientists plan what they are going to do in the laboratory before beginning an experiment.
To assist you in using your time in the laboratory efficiently and productively, we are requiring that you prepare prelabs. These are outlines of the experimental procedure that you plan to follow for a given experiment. They may take several forms. You will be given explicit directions on the type of prelab that we will require. Once scientists have discovered something new about nature, they have a responsibility to communicate it to other scientists.