Keeping a Laboratory Notebook

Learning Outcome

Maintain a laboratory notebook following expectations for scientific laboratories.

 

In many fields – especially the medical and engineering professions – records must be kept meticulously in various forms. Perhaps the most familiar form is the medical chart that doctors, nurses, and other health professionals must keep for each patient. For scientists, the equivalent document is the laboratory notebook, which is considered to be the primary record of their data collection.

Laboratory notebooks are not just for experimentalists; for example, Dr. Law keeps one for his computational research to keep track of the methods and molecules he studies, which may include code snippets and directions on how to use software.

If laboratory notebooks are not kept properly you may find that your future work cannot be confirmed by others and will have to be retracted, even if you actually did them. They have been known to be subpoenaed in court, and requested if others question your results.

An example of a problem caused by this can be seen from this example. Taira and his students at the University of Tokyo, who specialized in RNA research, landed in hot water because of the lack of laboratory notes. A member of his group failed to keep laboratory notes, and as a result, the data is considered to be uncredible. As a result, already-published papers in Nature had to be retracted and corrected, as seen in this news article: Nature 2005, 437, 461.

Another problem is that, especially with larger-scale projects, it is not uncommon to write papers or reports based on experiments that may have been completed weeks or months ago. Alternately, you may find that you need to remember how you did a certain experiment which you may have done last year. In either case, keeping an organized laboratory notebook will help you recall what you have done and report the results without redoing the experiment.

As a course for science/engineering majors, we aim to ensure that you have gotten into the habit of keeping good lab notes. Even if you are going into the medical fields rather than pure science, the concept of rigorous note-keeping is also found in medical charts.

The Basic Rules

As this is the primary, permanent record of your work, it must be written in ink (i.e. with a pen). White-out and pencil must never be used.
Cross out neatly with a pen if you made a mistake. Also, do not skip pages when using your notebook.

The golden rule for this is that your laboratory notebook should be a complete record of what you did. A good student in your class should be able to repeat your work and compare their results with yours based solely on what is in your notebook (without recourse to the manual).

In order to prevent the carbon sheets that are not being written on from being scratched, place the periodic table attached to the notebook directly under the yellow page on which the duplicate copy should appear.

As this is a chronological, formal record, the following rules apply:

  • All entries must be dated. While each experiment should begin on a fresh page, you should feel free to continue on multiple pages for a given experiment.
    • If an experiment spans multiple days, just put the second date in the middle of the page.
  • If you run out of pages in your notebook, you must get a new one. You may reuse an old laboratory notebook from a previous semester provided you have pages remaining.
  • You are not allowed to skip pages in your laboratory notebook – use your pages from the first to the last, in that order.
  • Notebooks are your primary record. Therefore, be sure to record data as you go along (not in your head or scratch paper!). Keeping it neat is not a priority; however, it must be legible.

What to Include in your Laboratory Notebook

The directions here are somewhat different than those for in-person experiments, as there are less safety risks and time restraints.  For in-person experiments, we typically have students write down the procedure before lab so that they have reviewed the procedure before lab.

Before Doing the Experiment: Purpose

What is the aim of your experiment? What are you trying to find out in this experiment?

Generally, a hint of this can be found by reading the objectives of the experiment. However, you should review the introduction and procedure of the experiment to see what you are trying to do.

Summarize the purpose of the experiment in no more than a sentence or two.

During the Experiment: Procedure and Results

Essentially, what you need to do is to paraphrase, in note form, sufficient essential details that an “A” student in this class can do what you did in the experiment without recourse to the laboratory manual.  That way, we can make sure that your experiment is reproducible.

Procedure

During the experiment, you should write out each step of the procedures as you did it in note form.  If you made a mistake, you should keep it and then write down what the mistake is.  Note that note-form is acceptable and that full sentences are not required. The use of abbreviations is acceptable.

Often, you will be asked to develop some of your own procedures or investigate things yourself.  For these cases, please record what you did/tried, not what the directions say.
  • Critical volumes, concentrations and pieces of equipment must be described.  That said,  you don’t need to write down approximate volumes of reagents used (when the amount of reagent used really doesn’t matter) or the exact details of the standard glassware used unless it affects the accuracy of the
    result.
  • Sketches and flowcharts may be used if you think they would be useful.

Results

Be sure to record all data and observations as you collect them into your lab notebook (you will likely interleave this with . You should record sufficient detail such that you have sufficient information to complete your laboratory report.

License

Virtual Chemistry Experiments Copyright © by Yu Kay Law. All Rights Reserved.

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