These comments are meant to assist the students in later grading of the notebook. The notebook will be returned the next meeting day. The TA and professor will also observe laboratory notebook usage in laboratory sections. Students must come to lab prepared to do the experiment . Calculations in the laboratory description hand-out should be carried out in the laboratory notebook.
Students write laboratory reports for the five experiments they perform.
The first laboratory reports are written in the style of internal reports used in industry. These reports hone organizational and writing skills. Later reports consist of complete journal-style articles, readable by those not intimately familiar with the techniques used in the experiments. Students choose a final project, design an experiment, and execute it. Results from the final project are presented in a short oral presentation at the end of the class.