UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

MANUFACTURING & MECHANICAL ENGINEERING LABORATORIES

The Short Laboratory Report

Presentation
The report should be word processed. The total length should not normally exceed the
equivalent of 4 typewritten A4 pages excluding graphs, tables and title page.
The following format should cover most cases:
Title Page
The lab title and number, date of experiment, and your lab group number must be
correctly filled in.
Introduction
This introduces the reader to the background of the experiment, and explains why the
experiment is useful. It should be in your own words and be brief. No more than a
quarter of an A4 page.
Objectives
Simple statements of the goals of the experiment no more than one eighth of a page.
Observations and Results
Report all the results obtained, and any important observations that were made whilst
obtaining the results. The results should be presented clearly, in tabular and, where
possible, graphical form. All readings taken in the experiment must be shown as well
as the calculated results. Refer to the section on Style for guidance on presentation of
results.
Discussion
The discussion is one of the most important parts of the report. You should discuss
the results obtained, the trends that can be observed in the data, and the reasons for
this behaviour. You should comment on the sources and, where possible, the
magnitude of any errors. The discussion should contain constructive, well thought
out, criticism of the lab and the main points you have learned. This section should be
around one side of A4 long.
Conclusion
The main outcomes of the lab should be summarised. This should be a statement of
the extent to which the objectives of the lab were met and should be specific to the
lab. Normally this section should not be more than a quarter of a page.
Style
The style of a professional report (which should be adopted for this report) is very
different from a typical A level report. You should note the following points of style:
*

The report should be written in the passive voice. Use the past tense version
for describing what you did eg. "...the readings were taken every minute"
instead of "...we took readings every minute". Sometimes the present passive
is appropriate eg. "... it is shown by Timoshenko [3] that ...".

All figures (including graphs) and tables should have a number and a caption:
eg. Fig 3: Strain Measurements; Table 5: Temperature variation for second
sample. Thus all figures and tables can be easily referred to from the body of
the report.

References to textbooks are straightforward and should include: title, author,

publisher, year of publication and ISBN if possible.
eg. 4

McComb, W.D. The Physics of Fluid Turbulence,

Oxford University Press, 1990, ISBN 019856256X.

There should be a continuous prose thread running throughout the report. The
following piecemeal presentation is not acceptable:
Fluid pressure, p = 1.2 x 106 Pa
Internal diameter = 10.32 mm
Outer diameter = 10.96 mm

a = 10.32/2 = 5.16 mm
b = 10.96/2 = 5.48 mm
g = (a+b)/2 = 5.32 mm
f =

a2 p b2

b2 a2 r2

(5.16 x10 3 ) x1.2 x10 6

5.48
(1

3 2
3 2
5.32
(5.48 x10 ) (5.16 x10 )

= 0.282 MPa
Instead it should be replaced by something like:
"Substituting the measured values of a, b and p given in Table 3 into eq. (5)
gives a mean stress of 0.282 MPa"
*

OAO

SI units should be used throughout. Common mistakes include:

- using upper case instead of lower case letters eg. kN and Hz are correct, KN
and HZ are not.
- writing 'sec' instead of s
- not observing the 'multiples of a thousand' rule according to which km, m
and mm are acceptable but cm are not.
- writing kW of energy instead of kWh.
- writing "weight in kg" instead of "mass in kg" or "weight in kgf".