FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE

ENGR3270U Kinematics and Dynamics of Machines

LABORATORY REPORT
Instructor(s):
TA:

LAB REPORT #:
LAB GROUP NUMBER #:

Date performed

Date submitted

dd/mm/yyyy

dd/mm/yyyy

Date received

Total pages #

Grade

LAB GROUP MEMBERS

#

Surname, Name

Signature

Lecture CRN

Student ID

1
2
3
4
Remarks:
- If one in group cheats, the entire group will be responsible for it.
- Plagiarism and dishonesty will not be tolerated.
- The group member(s), who dont sign the report, will be considered not contributed and given a mark of zero
for the report.
- This cover sheet should be fully completed.
- All reports should be submitted in two weeks time to the TA during the lab session.

Table of Contents
1.

ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................................2

2.

INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................2

3.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.........................................................................................2

4.

EXPERIMENTAL UNIT & PROCEDURE............................................................................3

5.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION...............................................................................................3

6.

CONCLUSIONS......................................................................................................................4

7.

REFERENCES.........................................................................................................................5

8.

APPENDIX a - DATA..............................................................................................................6

9.

APPENDIX b CALCULATIONS.........................................................................................7

1. ABSTRACT
The abstract is a condensed version of the entire paper. It allows a reader to quickly understand
the purpose, methods, results and significance of your research without reading the entire paper.
Abstracts or papers published in scholarly journals are useful when conducting library research,
because the researcher can quickly determine whether the research report will be relevant to the
topic. The material in the abstract is written in the same order as that within the paper, and has
the same emphasis. An effective abstract should include a sentence or two summarizing the
highlights from each of the sections: introduction (including purpose), methods, results, and
discussion. To reflect the content of the paper accurately, the abstract should be written after the
final draft of your paper is complete, although it is placed at the beginning of the paper.

2. INTRODUCTION
WHY DID YOU STUDY THIS PROBLEM?
The introduction should identify the problem or issue and give background information
(historical and/or theoretical) about that problem. The introduction contains a brief literature
review which should describe previous research conducted on the problem, and explain how the
current experiment will help to clarify or expand the knowledge. This information should justify
why you conducted the experiment. All references to previous studies should be properly
documented. The introduction should end with a purpose statement, sometimes in the form of a
hypothesis or null hypothesis. The purpose statement is a single sentence which specifically
states the answer to the question that the experiment was designed to answer; e.g., the purpose of
this investigation was to determine the effects of environmentally realistic exposures of acid
precipitation on productivity of field-grown and chamber-grown peanuts.

3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
What are the concepts being investigated?
Brief discussion of the equations being applied and any important relationships that you feel are
relevant to the calculations.

4. EXPERIMENTAL UNIT & PROCEDURE

WHAT DID YOU DO? HOW DID YOU DO IT?
In the materials and methods section of a formal lab report, you should describe how and when
you did your work, including experimental design, experimental apparatus, methods of gathering
and analysing data, and types of control. This section must include complete details and be
written clearly enough to allow readers to duplicate the experiment if they so wish. This section
is written in past tense because you have already done the experiment. It should not be written in
the form of instructions or as a list of materials, as in a laboratory manual. Instead, it is written as
a narrative describing, either in first person active voice or in passive voice, what you did, e.g.,
first person active voice: I filled six petri plates with agar; passive voice: six petri plates were
filled with agar. Methods adapted from other sources should be referenced. Photographs, maps
and diagrams may be used to help describe the experimental set up.

5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

WHAT DID YOU FIND?
In the results, you present your observations and data with no interpretations or conclusions
about what they mean. Tables and graphs should be used to supplement the text and to present
the data in a more understandable form (see Tables and Figures below). Raw data will probably
be most effective in table format, with the highlights summarized in graph form. Use past tense
to describe your results. Sample calculations for a lab report in a course may be included in a
separate section titled, Calculations, or in an Appendix at the end of the report.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN? HOW DOES IT RELATE TO PREVIOUS WORK IN THE FIELD?
Explain what you think the data means. Describe patterns and relationships that emerged.
Compare these results to trends described in the literature and to theoretical behaviour. Explain
how any changes to, or problems with, the experimental procedure may have affected the results,
or offer other suggestions as to why the results may have been different from or similar to related
experiments described in the literature. Interpretations should be supported whenever possible by
references to the lab manual, the text, and/or other studies from the literature, properly
documented. Remind the reader of your own results, when relevant, without repeating endless
3

information from Results. If the lab manual includes questions to be answered in the Discussion,
integrate the responses into a logical discussion, rather than answering them one by one. In
addition, do not include only the answers to the questions use them as a guideline for
supplementing your discussion, not limiting it.

6. CONCLUSIONS

7. REFERENCES
For help with proper referencing formats for various sources, you can visit the below link:
<http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/2/>

8. APPENDIX a - DATA

9. APPENDIX b CALCULATIONS