Lab notebook:

Why is it important to have a lab notebook?

You need one to pass this class.

You need to know and understand what you are doing before coming to lab.

What happens if I miss class?

You may NOT under any circumstances record anything in your lab notebook.  You did not do the experiment so you have nothing to record.

But, I would still recommend coming to class for other parts of the lab so you will learn the information that will be on the lab practical.

You will be allowed to drop one notebook assignment during the semester. 

Some labs require multiple sections to complete the laboratory.  If you miss one of these sections, you MAY not write up the laboratory.

If you write up a laboratory when you were not in class, I will give you a grade of 0 for the entire laboratory notebook for the semester.

When will I need to hand in my notebook?

I will check your notebook periodically during class to see that you wrote the purpose and methods in it (described below).

If you are caught without having written the purpose or objective, you will lose 1 point from that laboratory writeup.

You will also need to hand the notebook in at the end of each set of labs. 

How do I write the purpose and method if you have my notebook?

You will need to have 2 notebooks.  One notebook will have labs 1,3,5,7 and 9.  The other notebook will have labs 2,4,6,8,and 10.  While I am grading one notebook, you can be working on the next lab in your other notebook.

What style of notebook should I get?

You must use a bound notebook.  I will give an example during the first class meeting and also have a picture posted on the syllabus.

What should the format of the notebook be?

Your lab notebook should have the following sections FOR EACH EXPERIMENT.

1.     Purpose or objective:

You should write one or two sentences IN YOUR OWN WORDS explaining why you are performing this experiment?  What do you expect to learn from it?

Example:  The purpose of this laboratory is to learn how to perform a gram stain.

2. Materials and methods:

You should list in this section the materials that you will need to perform the experiment. You should also briefly write the protocol that you need.

You may copy some of the material from the lab book but you should put some things in your own words.  The purpose of doing this is so that when you come to lab, you have all of the steps in front of you and you can easily perform the laboratory.

The purpose and methods for each experiment should be completed BEFORE coming to lab.  I will periodically check that this is being done.  If you are not doing this, then you will have points taken off of your notebook grade for that laboratory (1 point).  It is important that you read the experiment before coming to class so that you know why you are doing the experiment, what you will need and how you will perform the experiment.

The following sections, listed below should be completed while performing the experiment or after performing the experiment. 

3. Results:

In this section, you explain what happened in the experiment and the results that you obtained.  For some laboratories, you may want or need to provide a drawing.  For other labs you may need a table or other data.

Example:  I performed a gram stain on my bacteria and have provided a picture showing that is a gram positive bacteria.

4. Discussion/possible sources of error:

In this section, you may want to discuss what the results mean or why your experiment might not have worked.

For example, because my slide contained pink and purple cells, I probably contaminated my culture.

Other lab notebook requirements:

You should also number each page in the upper right hand corner.  In the beginning of the notebook, you should leave a few pages blank.  These pages will become your table of contents.  When you have finished a lab, you can go back and write what lab it is and what pages it will be found on.

Your notebooks should be maintained throughout the semester.  I will only grade one laboratory at a time but you should have all of the laboratories written up in the notebooks.  This way, you will have all of the material that will help you to study for the practicals.