What Is A Lab Notebook And What Goes In One?

A lab notebook at the professional level is a record of everything you have done in the lab. Please review this presentation by the National Institutes of health Links to an external site. on Lab Notebooks for a glimpse of what a professional lab notebook should be.

Laboratory Notebook Entries

In this course we will use Collaborations to establish an electronic Lab Notebook for each group. We will be using the information provided at ScienceBuddies.org Links to an external site. as the basis for keeping our class group Lab Notebooks.

Criteria	Meets Expectations	Fails to meet Expectations	Pts Possible
Hypothesis; If [...], then [...], because [...]	A testable hypothesis is stated clearly in the given format at the beginning of each experiment.	A testable hypothesis is not clearly stated, is in the incorrect format, is missing and/or is not testable.	5 pts
Introduction	Introduction to the laboratory experiment is provided that discusses the experimental hypothesis.	Introduction to the laboratory experiment is provided that discusses the experimental hypothesis is missing	5 pts
Materials and Methods	Materials and Methods are fully documented. If another person came along they could perform the experiment by following the documentation or by referring to the correct reference materials.	Materials and methods contain blatent errors or omissions that would not allow another individual to perform the experiment documented.	5 pts
Diagrams	Neat and properly labeled with scale and axes as appropriate.	Messy, poorly labeled, and/or missing axes.	5 pts
Conclusions	Topic sentence present, data appropriately used to support conclusion, conclusion statement given that relates back to the hypothesis.	No topic sentence present, data inappropriately used to support conclusion, conclusion statement given does not relate back to the hypothesis.	5 pts
			Total Possible Points: 25