You must submit a report describing your work on each regular weekly lab exercise.
Each student must write their own lab report based on work done by themselves and their partner.
You don’t lose marks for getting help from the TA, Instructor, or another student, but any significant help must be clearly acknowledged in your report
e.g. “I couldn’t get it to work until Prof. Bailey pointed out I had the transistor leads backwards.”
You may sometimes be asked to submit a short video in addition to your report
Report Requirements
Top of first page must have
Lab number and title
Your name and student number
Name of our partner.
Answers to the specific lab questions must be clearly and obviously labelled in the report, i.e. with “R-1”, “R-2”, ….
The report should follow the order of the write-up, even if you did the work in a different order.
Keep it succinct.
Too many words conveying little information irritates the marker.
If a short 15 second video is asked for, don’t submit a 3 minute epic.
But not too succinct.
Briefly mention test you are performing.
Any screen capture, photo, or plot should have a caption and/or some accompanying words, e.g. “As can be seen from this screen capture, the peak-to-peak voltage was 3.4V”.
You can cite the write-up, but don’t just say “I followed the lab instructions and the result was 88 ohms”.
Make it legible and well organized
An easy-to-read report makes the marker happy, and a happy marker is a generous marker.
It is best to prepare the report electronically, e.g. using Word, LaTeX, …, but clear, legible handwritten reports are allowed.
Any handwritten report must be clear and legible. Take photos of each page and combine them into a single compact pdf file for submission. See these instructions.
Include all information that the lab write-up asks for. You may include additional information that is useful or demonstrates some aspect of your understanding.
If an answer is based on a plot, include the plot.
A circuit diagram, with component values and Analog Discovery 2 connections clearly indicated, is always a good idea.
Your AD2 Serial Number (in the lower right corner of your WaveForms window) must always be visible and clearly legible in any photo or screen capture from WaveForms software that you include in a report.
Measurements should have appropriate units and uncertainties if appropriate.
If the Lab instructions tell you to carry out tasks with nothing specific to report, just briefly mention this work in your report.
e.g, your first lab report should include something along the lines of: “Watched the AD2 Introductory videos”.
Your report should cite, as appropriate, notebook pages or computer files.
If something is weird, say so. You want to flag issues, not the marker.
Figures
“A picture is worth a thousand words”, so use figures (plots, circuit diagrams, oscilloscope displays, apparatus photos, …) to convey information efficiently.
Figures should have a short caption.
Figures should be large enough to be legible, but not larger than necessary.
When possible, plot similar data in the same figure, but figures should not be too cluttered.