writing help 91

Guidelines:

Two page description, following the guidelines from class, of a lab protocol, or any other scientific method with which you are familiar. Your description must be completely text, with no graphics or lists, in the style of a lab report Materials & Methods. Typically this section of a lab report gives a brief description of the techniques, instruments, sampling schemes, and study sites. You should be concise, yet provide enough detail to allow someone else to conduct a similar study.

Describe how you conducted the study and include variables that were controlled (i.e. factors that are kept the same between treatments so that any differences in the dependent variable between treatments can be attributed to the change in the independent variable).

Common, widely used techniques (e.g. how to operate a microscope) should not be described.

Report methods in past tense (e.g. “we measured”) and give enough detail that someone who has never done the procedure could replicate what you did exactly without adding any unknown variables.