Keep a thorough record of your work in lab, using the Chemistry Department-approved lab notebook (available at the bookstore). Keep your records according to the guidelines below. Hand in notebook sheets for each project along with the report. Your instructor will evaluate your entries and make suggestions about how to keep more useful records of your lab work. Your grade for the lab notebook will be based upon the kind of records you are keeping in the latter part of the semester, after you have had a chance to correct earlier deficiencies, if any.
You must have a bound laboratory notebook that produces a carbon copy of each page as you work. Your instructor will show you the approved notebook for chemistry courses. When you begin a new project, start on a new page, and list it in the Table of Contents. Give dates of all work -- begin each session of lab work by entering the date in the notebook. If you think that the timing of steps may be important, enter the time you begin each important operation.
It is not acceptable to keep notes -- any notes of lab actions, observations, and data -- on scrap paper. Your notebook is your scrap paper. It is not supposed to be a work of art. It should contain all the information that is necessary for you or any person with similar background to reproduce the experiment that you performed, along with thorough records of what you observed as you proceeded. This is the primary criterion for a good notebook: it contains enough detail that someone unfamiliar with the experiment can perform it by following your notes, using your observations to help them see if all is going well. You should develop the habit of recording your notes at regular intervals throughout the afternoon. It is not acceptable to work from 1:30 until 4:15 and then try to summarize your day's work -- too much detail is lost. Of course, your writing must be legible.
Also carry out your preliminary and final calculations and graphing in the notebook, and then transfer graphs, final calculations, or sample calculations to the report as you write it. If you use computer spreadsheets or graphing programs, make a copy for your notebook, as well as for your report, and attach final graphs and spreadsheets in the notebook (two copies). When you are ready to write the report, write your major conclusions in the notebook in an informal "conclusions" section. With these tasks completed, you are ready to prepare the report. Writing the report should be mostly a matter of organizing entries taken from your notebook. If you follow these guidelines, your notebook can stand alone (without the report) as a record of your work during and after lab.
Write all your notes in the first person, past tense, active voice. In formal presentations, many uninformed scientists still write in third person, past tense, passive voice. This style is no longer acceptable even in formal writing, and is certainly not acceptable for informal notes. Record your notes in ink. If you make an error, cross it out with a single stroke. Do not erase or obliterate your mistakes.
It is a good idea to set up your notebook ahead of time, by rewriting procedures in your own words as step-by-step procedures, and by setting up tables for data you will be collecting. This is the only preliminary work you should do in your lab notebook. DO NOT use your lab notebook for taking lecture notes during pre-laboratory meetings.
Factors that affect your notebook score are completeness, clarity, and legibility. Completeness means that your notes not only describe what you did (to the bitter end of your final calculations, results, and conclusions), but they also record your observations of what happened as a result of your action(s). One of the most common deficiencies in lab notebooks is the failure to record observations.