A report will be required for each laboratory experiment conducted in a course. In brief, a report should be:

1. Clear but succinct.
2. Directed to a specific audience. In this case, your audience includes other engineers or scientists having similar background to you.
3. Written in grammatically correct english.
4. Except for appendices, typed.

Elements of a report:

1. Cover

Bind your report in some kind of cover to distinguish it from other documents.

2. Letter of Transmittal

Write a brief letter to the specific individual you intend to read the report. This letter should contain the report's title, its purpose and a brief statement of the results as well as important conclusions. The letter should contain numeric results that are central to the report. The letter might also contain recommendations, if appropriate.

3. Title Page

This page contains a title, the author's name, the date of completion and a very brief summary of the report.

4. Introduction

This section contains a general introduction of the work and the physical situation. Where appropriate, the introduction should contain literature references to help provide a motivation for conducting the experiment, and to detail what others have accomplished in areas pertaining to the experiment. The report should indicate why the physical situation is important. The introduction also must contain the objectives and scope of the work. Objectives means the goals of the report, while scope involves defining the boundaries of the investigation. Not only what you did is important to the reader, but what you did not do or did not considered must be clarified. If the work has some mathematical basis, then the development of a mathematical representation may be included in the introduction. Any material in the introduction that uses outside sources must be properly cited.

5. Materials and Methods

You must provide a detailed account of your experimentation and data analysis so that others may subsequently repeat your experiment.

6. Results and Discussion

These components of a report may be placed into one section, but it is easier to separate them into two adjacent sections.

A goal of the results section is to lead the reader through the data in a logical and understandable way, always in the context of the objectives of the report. Often the raw data that was collected (e.g., millivolts) must be converted into units that would be of interest to the reader (e.g., ppm). The results should be represented in tables or graphs if such representation makes your results more understandable. It is insufficient, however, to provide graphical or tabular results without any written explanation. It is completely insufficient to give results without elaboration. Lead the reader through the results in a logical manner. What goes into the results section should be readily identifiable...just the results.

The discussion component includes the comparison of your results with those predicted by any model developed, an indication of the reasonableness of the data and possible sources of error. This section provides the meaning behind the results, and the discussion must follow logically from the results. Often the discussion section cites works of others. Throughout the results and discussion you should remain within the scope as previously described in the introduction.

7. Conclusions and Recommendations

This section is often very brief. One shoud not merely reiterate the discussion. The best approach for this section is to address broader questions such as how the investigation answered the questions that were originally sought and how the investigations could have been accomplished differently to improve the results. Depending on the nature of the report, sometimes a very specific recommendation can be made (e.g., "The company should buy pump XYZ from Manufacturer ABC because it satisfies design criteria and costs the least").

8. References

List all references you cited. Internet references should primarily be from federal government sites or from academic institutions (.gov or .edu). Information from commercial websites must be considered with skepticism.

9. Appendices

Additional information is needed if someone else wants to substantiate your work. Appendices are the appropriate location for information that must be retained for subsequent workers, but does not contribute significantly to the report's main message. Raw data, detailed mathematical derivations, computer programs, sample calculations should each be provided in separate appendices.