Over the time physicists have developed a spectrum of techniques and methods that every day prove to be enormously productive way of researching and understanding natural phenomena. It is an undeniable truth that the entire Universe is a physics laboratory and that we exist in it. Everything we do, everywhere we go and everything we observe is happening in that laboratory. In most situations we do not pay attention to the that laboratory. A physics laboratory is a test environment prepared specifically to test our perception of reality under controlled conditions.
Experiments are crucial in a sense that they can confirm or deny the theory, the physical law.
And, written reports are how physicist share their findings with one another. Often one limits itself to technical stuff like automobile engines, computers, superconductivity, elementary particles, or flashlights, etc. However, the realm of physics is much broader and techniques physicist developed have larger range of applicability. One of the reasons why this happens is that in physics we learn about making models of phenomena and events. Clearly, some models will be better than the others and some will be more generalizable than others.