ECE 2100 Lab Notebook and Report HAN Q

ECE 2100 - Lab Notebook and Report HAN Q. LE

What for? Practicing the most essential part of empirical science: documenting, analyzing, and reporting experimental results. In the industrial age: Lab notebook is often the first place of evidence of invention: claims and protection of intellectual property. A record of work done for review, archival. In this course, a crucial and essential component of learning

Who are the audience of Lab Notebook and Report? Oneself Peers with comparable knowledge and skills in the art. Co-workers, Intellectual In collaborators property experts and legal counsels this course: student peers of the same field of interest but not yet taking the course, who should be able to gain technical knowledge from the notebook and reports.

What Lab Notebook and Report is not A memo to self or a short note to say I already did what was supposed to be done A collage of snap shots, bits and pieces and an implicit assumption “you know what these meant, ” or “you know I did it”. An answer to a survey questionnaire: “yes, no, maybe, 3, a, and a few uncaptioned, unlabeled, thumbnail-like, low-resolution randomly placed pictures.

About Lab Notebook and Report A rough first-cut, unpolished scientific/engineering/technical report, where presentation is not of premium value. But satisfies the fundamental requirement of technical work: sufficiency: a knowledgeable person with skills in the art will fully understand the objective of the work, what it is about, what are the background, what is new being done, what are the results, and most important of all: have sufficient information such that one can duplicate the work, reproduce, and verify the results if one wishes. This is a fundamental criterion of a scientific/engineering technical report: must have sufficient details and clarity such that the work can be duplicated, Highly desirable: Should be sufficiently well organized to aid one’s understanding: this is about technical communication.

Discussion of examples

Summary From previous slide For this course: student peers of the same field of interest but not yet taking the course, who should be able to gain technical knowledge from the notebook and reports. Imagine writing report for your friends (definitely NOT for instructor or TA), who have not taken the course, but have background in electrical engineering comparable to yours. Of course, the friends didn’t read the Lab write-up and knew what it was about. How would you “teach” your friends so that they can learn the same thing as you do? - It is not about telling a story “I did this and this…” - It should be an expository writing. Follow the notebook layout, but explain thoroughly so that an uninitiated person can gain the same knowledge as yours. - Absolutely NOT: answer questions as if to instructor or TA.

A last note • We have fewer Labs, no Formal Report. A bit more work at home. But overall, less work. • Technical writing or communication skill is a part of the course; and Formal Report is intended for this skill development. • Here, we will use Lab Reports as the media for developing technical writing or communication skill.