The importance of a lab notebook

Hello Scientists!

We had a very good question submitted about one of the required elements of a science fair project. We ask in the guidelines for the fair that you keep a lab note book during the course of your project. The question was about what is expected to be in a lab notebook.

An elementary school science fair lab note book should contain:

*brainstormed experiment ideas or things to include in an experiment you have already decided on

*some background information you have learned about your topic

*possible variables and the other things you must hold constant so that your experimental results show ONLY the effect of the one thing you changed (your variable) in each experimental trail

*one or more possible hypotheses about your experiment (what you think is going to happen when you perform your experiments)

*your experimental set up - how are you going to perform your experiment? What will be varied, what held constant? What will be measured and how will you measure it? What equipment will you need?


*Once the experimental design has been decided, draw out a diagram and write a step by step plan (your 'procedure') that you can refer back to so you can always do the experiment the same way


*Begin a new page for every experiment, date the page and write all the important details of what happens - some little things might not seem important at the time but may explain an unexpected result later! Remember to perform every trial of your experiment several times to see if the data is the same every time. Record your data in the notebook so you can make a snazzy chart or graph to display it on your project board later. 

*Any conclusions you might make about your results can be worked out in the lab book as well.

You should write clearly enough that you can read it later, but perfect spelling is not very important. If you do want to change something, just cross it out with one or two lines and write it again.

That seems like a lot of stuff!!! Just think of it as a diary for your science fair project. Write everything down in there first, and then go back to the lab book later when it is time to write up the project and make your poster. Everything will be there waiting for you... no lost papers with important data or revolutionary ideas that you can't quite recall. If you aren't the fastest writer and your fabulous ideas come too fast and furious for you to keep up you can enlist the help of an older helper, but try to write some of it yourself because practice makes your skills better and faster. When it is time to turn your project in write the title of the project on the cover (but NOT YOUR NAME) and turn it in with the poster.

Remember that the deadline for submission of your hypotheses is February 13th. The forms are in the Media Center by Mrs Burro's office. I am excited to report that I have had to put more in the stack once already and the first hypothesis has been turned in! As always, email me with any questions or post them to the blog as a comment.