A comparison between lab report A: “Fatigue Failure through Bending Experiment Adapted from a report submitted by Sarah Thomas” and lab report B: “Evaluation of Vibration Analysis Tools to predict the Dynamic Integrity of a Truss Structure.”
Title, abstract, introduction, material and method section, results section, discussion section, conclusion section, acknowledgments section, and references section are nine ordinary sections of a standard lab report. This article going to compare two lab report through those nine angles. The first lab report is “Fatigue Failure through Bending Experiment Adapted from a report submitted by Sarah Thomas”. It will be called “report A” at following paragraph. The second lab report is “Evaluation of Vibration Analysis Tools to predict the Dynamic Integrity of a Truss Structure.” It will be called “report B” at following paragraph.
Lab A using Chauvenet’s criterion to analyze the resulting numbers of cycles of failure and plot a stress vs cycles diagram to observe endurance limit of the sample 6061-T6 aluminum with a neck radius of 2.50mm. Lab B tested different method for finding the natural frequency of the system and finding the stressed of the truss members. Comparing two lab reports we can lab report A is better than lab report B in all ways.
Title
Lab report A have a clear title. It told reader what subject they studied in an understandable way. For example, it used “bending experiment” in stand of a complicated professional name. It also included keywords like “fatigue failure” to make it easily be searching. Lab report B make sample problem complicated and do not have the same focus as the report do. The purpose lab B is testing different method for finding the natural frequency of the system and finding the stressed of the truss members. Finding out the right method is the purpose, but the title make reader think the lab want to find out the “Dynamic integrity”. In the title part, lab report A present reader a better over look.
Abstract
Lab report A has a separate section for abstract which lab report B don’t have. In the separate abstract section of lab report A, reader can quickly find out the problem addressed by experimenter’s study, the conclusion of the lab and the implication of the study. From reading the abstract readers can get an over view of the whole experiment. In contrast, lab report B mixed abstract with introduction. The Summary and Introduction section from lab report B has totally four paragraphs. Readers have to read all the four paragraphs to find the information which can be found in one paragraph in lab report A. The worse thing is that the reader has read all four paragraphs but still can’t find the information they need. What’s more, the experimenter used a lot “you” and “your” in this section. Those “you” and “your” make the lab report like an email or letter between two persons. The irregular term make lab report B looks unprofessional.
