MAE 171A Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, Exercises of Mechanical Engineering

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MAE 171A

Mechanical Engineering Laboratory

Lecture Notes

Laboratory Report Writing

Introduction to lab report writing

 Concepts related to readers and writers

• Why are you writing this document?
  • The goals are to persuade, inform and document
  • The academic purpose is the display of knowledge

 Concepts related to text

• Features of
  • Content
  • Organization
  • Language
  • Format determined by your audience and your purpose

Writing as one of a team

 If different people are writing different sections

• One person should edit the final draft (a good report may come after many drafts) ( examples of great writers )

 Team writing needs careful planning

 Groups should agree on the outline of the report before drafting starts

 All the authors should read and approve the final version, each of them is responsible for the entire document (bad examples)

7

The writing process - outline

First thing to do - outline your report

• Write each heading at the top of a sheet of paper
• Write all the points you can think of under each heading
• Find all your notes, figures, tables
  • It is very important to write every detail of the experiment which others may need to repeat your experiment (negative example of paper on cold fusion)
• Sort these out and put then with relevant section

Structure of your laboratory report

 All pages must be numbered  All figures and tables must have legends that describe them

• You should be able to look at a figure and table and understand what is being shown without having to refer to the text.  All references must be fully cited in reference sections  As a rule no verbatim quotes allowed
• Such as: Arnez stated in 1998 that “Fracture mechanics is a method for predicting failure of a structure containing a crack. It uses methods of analytical solid mechanics to calculate the driving force on a crack and those of experimental solid mechanics to characterize the material's resistance to fracture.”

 Title page separate sheet  Abstract separate sheet  Table of contents separate sheet  List of tables separate sheet  List of figures separate sheet  Introduction  Theory  Experimental procedures  Experimental results  Discussion of results  Conclusions  Error analysis (can be part of discussion)  References separate sheet(s)  Appendices and raw data separate sheet(s)

The structure of your laboratory report must have

these major headings

20 pages maximum including figures and tables

11

Title page

• The title answers the question (compare to

hologram)

• What is the report about?
• The title should be
• Interesting and inviting( Gone with the Wind )
• Concise ( War and Peace , even order of words is important)
• Informative
• Accurate
• Include all group members, group number, group time

Title page example

Water Tunnel Measurement of the Drag Coefficient of a Cylinder (no words can be removed!) Presented to the University of California, San Diego Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering MAE 171A Date

Prepared by: Group X, Section A0X, Thursday afternoon Names of group members

Abstract

 Is an abbreviated, accurate representation of the content of the report

• Usually one paragraph
  • Why the experiment was done
  • How the experiment was performed
  • What pertinent results were obtained
  • Conclusion obtained from data analysis
    • Informative, quantitative, short, concisely written

 Do not refer in the abstract to information that is not in the report

 Use the third person

 Write this first section LAST!

List of figures

 Figures should be in numerical order,

using the same legend as what is on

the figure

 Figures need a page number

Figure Description

1 Variation of the elastic modulus as a function of temperature

Page number

4

List of tables

 Tables should be in numerical order,

using the same legend as what is on

the figure

 Tables need a page number

Table Description

1 Fracture toughness values as a function of tip radius for polycarbonate

Page number

6

Introduction

 Indicate the need for testing/experimental analysis

• Include
  • A statement of the problem that is being investigated and any sub-problems or
  • A question that needs to be answered about the phenomenon under study

 Answer the need for testing/experimental analysis

• Include
  • The method you'll employ to answer the question or solve the problem identified (i.e., What are you going to do?)
  • A description of the specific objective of the experiment
  • A statement of what will be covered in the report

Introduction editing worksheet

Area Question Y/ N Comments Content 1. Does the writer establish/ phenomenon studied and state its importanceidentify the to the field of engineering?

2. Does the writer avoid excessive discussion of real-world applications?
3. Does the writer clearly state the objectives of the experiment? Organization 1. Does the introduction appear to be clearly organized?
4. Does the writer avoid unnecessarily long paragraphs?

Language 1. Does the writer put old information before new information?

2. Does the writer use concise but specific language?
3. Does the writer avoid mechanical and grammatical errors?

Posted handout "Introduction" in Report Writing on website