The maintenance of a laboratory notebook is an important part of the Introductory Chemistry Laboratory experience. These written records of what transpires in the laboratory are critical to the practice of chemistry and other laboratory sciences. The objective of a laboratory notebook writeup can be summarized as to permit another scientist to be able to tell what was done in the laboratory in sufficient detail as to be able to reproduce the procedure and get the same result.
Laboratory notebooks are critical when unusual or unexpected results are obtained.
Discoveries and inventions are extreme examples of unusual results. The acceptance of such findings by the scientific community generally depends on independent reproduction of the finding. The pages should be numbered sequentially and they should never be removed. Entries should be dated. Unusual environmental conditions should be noted.