Fermentation—Lab Report Guidelines

The objective of this assignment is for you to understand how the scientific method comes to fruition in
the form of a scientific research paper. Each lab group has generated its own data by doing two
fermentation experiment(s), but each person must write and submit their own lab report. While you are
welcome to discuss your experiment and findings with your group members and/or your Instructor, you
must write your own lab report complete with a graph you create.

The following is a guide to writing your lab report.

Overall
 Divide your report into the following sections and label each section as “Introduction,” “Materials and
Methods,” “Results,” or “Discussion.”
 The use of first person–writing (I/we/etc.) is not allowed.
 The use of direct quotes is not allowed and will be penalized.

Title 2.5% of writing grade

Your title should be concise and describe the investigation. Think of the title as a complete summary of
the experiment in just one phrase or sentence. It is similar to the headline of a news story.
Good example—Higher pH conditions inhibit plant growth.
Mediocre example—pH conditions affect plant growth.
Bad examples—Plant growth and pH

Introduction 20% of writing grade

- Please be sure that you understand how to avoid plagiarism and ask your Instructor if you
have any questions. Plagiarism is a serious issue that could earn a 0 on your Lab Report
and more—depending on your Instructor’s policies.
o If you use an informational source, CITE IT in the text (Author, year) and in the
references section. Never copy your source word for word, and changing just one or more
words is still plagiarism! Any suspected plagiarism will be referred to the lab and lecture
Instructors. Any confirmed plagiarism will result in a “0” for the writing portion of
the lab report and possibly sanctions. This is at the discretion of the lab and lecture
Instructor.
- Write a basic description of fermentation.
o Any information source should be cited in the text (e.g., Author, year) and then included
in the References section.
- Relate the information you present about fermentation to the experiment that you conducted.
- The last paragraph of your Introduction should describe the reasons behind your experiment and
must include your overall question and hypothesis. These should not be in quotation marks.
- State the reasons behind how you arrived at your hypothesis (you should not have guessed, so
state why you thought your hypothesis was accurate).
- You must cite at least three different sources of information within the text of your Introduction.
o Only one informational source can be a website and Wikipedia is NOT acceptable.
 Only websites with an extension “.org,” “.edu,” or “.gov” are acceptable sources
of information from the web.
o Put the information into your own words and cite the source in the text in addition to
putting the complete reference in the References section.
  For example: Plants are attacked by many different insects and pathogens
(Puthoff et al., 2010).

Materials and Methods 15% of writing grade

- This section describes the steps of the experiment in PARAGRAPH form so that it can be
repeated by someone else without you being there.
- Do not list materials or method steps. Write what was done in paragraph form and the materials
used should be obvious.
- Make sure you include your method of data analysis (e.g., “Data from four replicates were
averaged and graphed with error bars representing the standard error of the mean.”).
- State what you did in past tense. Do NOT tell the reader what to do.
o Good: “The yeast mixture was placed . . .”
o Bad: “Place the yeast mixture . . .”

Results 25% of writing grade

- This section must consist of a graph summarizing the data and at least one paragraph
describing the results.
o In the written paragraph, summarize your findings, but do not try to interpret what you
think they mean. Pick a few of the key points of data (that you want to talk about in your
Discussion) and point them out to the reader in paragraph form.
o You must graph the average data. Given that all experiments had a form of replication,
error bars MUST be included.
 As always, graphs must have an informative title and labeled axes with units.
 Good title: Plant height as a function of water pH.
 Bad title: pH of water affects plant growth.
 The x-axis should be your different treatments and the y-axis should be ml of
CO2/min.
 Make sure you do not just have ml as your units. You should calculate a
rate of CO2 production (ml of CO2 divided by the number of minutes taken
to produce).
- Most likely you will be using the data from the second week of experiments, but this really
depends on the experiment(s). Speak with your lab Instructor if you need help. While multiple
graphs are OK, most likely, just one graph is enough to present all the needed data.
- Do NOT use the graph from your oral/group presentation. You must make your own graph
for the report. Any lab reports that have the same graph (even if it was created as a group)
will be considered plagiarism and all students using the graph will be given a “0” for the
writing portion of the report.

Discussion 25% of writing grade

- This is where you interpret your results by coming to conclusions and describing what you think
they mean in relation to the scientific information that you have read about previously (e.g.,
Introduction).
- Organize your writing in a logical manner.
- Make sure you answer all the questions below, however, you MUST compose a well thought-out
paragraph that flows well and is not just a list of one answer after another.
o What can you conclude from your experiment(s)?
 o How do the data presented in your Results section lead you to the conclusion(s)?
o Why do you think your experiment turned out like it did?
o Was your hypothesis supported or falsified (remember science does not “prove”
things)?
o Relate your results to what others have found in similar experiments.
 You must cite your source, or it will not be counted.
o What do you think the biological significance is of your experimental results?

References (Literature cited) 2.5% of writing grade

- A reference section must be included to list all informational sources used in your paper.
- References should be in MLA, APA, or another acceptable format. It does not matter which form
you use. Be consistent and provide enough information on your sources so that the reader would
be able to find them for their own use.
- Given that you needed three sources in your Introduction, you must have at least three sources
listed here.
 Only one informational source can be a website and Wikipedia is NOT acceptable. Only
websites with the extension “.org,” “.edu,” or “.gov” are acceptable sources of
information from the web.
 Cite the lab manual.
- Make sure that reviewers can find your sources of information reasonably easily given the
information you list in this section.

Overall Readability 10% of writing grade

- Grammar, flow, organization, overall appearance, and so on.
- If the lab report is not divided into sections and/or those sections are not labeled with
“Introduction,” “Materials and Methods,” “Results,” and “Discussion”—two rating points
will be deducted in this section.
- The use of first person–writing (I/we/etc.) is not allowed and will be penalized in this section.
- The use of direct quotes is not allowed and will be penalized in this section. When you use
information/ideas from another source, paraphrase the information and cite the source in the text
and in the References section.
o Just in case you are worried about plagiarism—if you use someone else’s words and do
not quote them (which is penalized) and you do not cite the source of those words/ideas
then you have committed plagiarism.