CM3215
Fundamentals of Chemical Engineering Laboratory
Summary of Report Instructions
September 2007
Department of Chemical Engineering
Michigan Technological University
Prof. Faith A. Morrison
Contents:
1. The introduction should be focussed on your objectives. All objectives should be mentioned in the introduction.
2. In the Experimental section, start out by describing the experimental set-up. Describe each piece of equipment that you used, identifying its manufacturer. Describe techniques that you used.
3. In the Results section, describe what you did in detail and how it turned out. This section will contain most of your graphs and tables.
4. In the Discussion section, discuss the meaning of your results; compare experimental results with theories. Mention difficulties and future work that is needed. You may need to introduce additional tables and figures to complete your discussion of your results.
5. Your Conclusions should report on your objectives. Did you accomplish your objectives? What were the significant outcomes of the work?
6. Do not introduce new material into the Conclusions; discuss everything in the Discussion section and only summarize your conclusions in the Conclusions section.
Format:
1. Check significant figures on tables and on graphs. You should not be reporting more than four under any circumstances that I can think of; often it will be three or two or even one. Standard deviations should be one or two sig figs. Note that the number of digits you use on your figure axes must match the number of sig figs of the data plotted.
2. Tables must include captions; table captions go on top of the table.
3. Figures must include captions; figure captions go on the bottom of the figure. Figures in reports should not contain titles.
4. Most reports should include a reference section; any reference materials must be properly identified in this section. For books or articles the correct citation method in the reference section is: author(s) or editor(s), "title," publisher, city, date. For web citations see the class guidelines on the web. Within the text it is preferable to refer to the reference material with author, year format. For example "The viscosity of water found in the literature is 1.087 cP (Geankoplis, 1998)." A second exampl is: "The density of sugar was found in Lide (2003)."
5. Be quantitative. If you report a density, the proper format is "The density of the solution was 1.234 +/1 .005 g/cm3." If you find yourself using phrases like "the data were close to the literature values," replace it with a number such as in this phrase: "the data differed from the literature values by 18%."
6. On graphs, do not use gridlines; do not put a frame around the outside of the graph. Follow the class graphing guidelines. You should include tic marks; your log-log or log-linear graphs should include log ticmarks.
7. Do not split tables across pages unless absolutely necessary. Long tables are not usually necessary; put long tables in the appendix or omit.
8. Do not split up paragraphs to insert tables or figures. Place the tables and figures after they are mentioned and close-by but allow the text paragraphs to be whole (see any technical journal or text book for a model of how this is done).
9. When using symbols, identify them the first time you introduce the symbol. For example, "The pressure difference is given by P=rgh, where P is the pressure difference, r is the density of the fluid, g is the acceleration due to gravity, and h is the height of the fluid."
10. Include page numbers.
Technical Advice:
1. Calibration curves are tied to their units; therefore you must always report the units used in a calibration curve. A suggested format is: P(psi)=1.324 I(mA)+2.545, where P is pressure in psi and I is current in mA. Report extra digits when reporting a calibration curve so that it may be used with precision.
2. Report your data with the correct number of significant figures. When using your data in more complex calculations, however, do not use rounded values but use the unrounded calcuations for precision. This methodology avoids introducing round-off error.
3. Be mindful of the range of your measurements. On our DP meter, for example, the current only goes from 4-20 mA. Do not attempt to take data at higher currents than 20mA.