Lab 1 is on osmosis (dialysis tubing and sugar syrup, 3 different cells created),
Lab 2 is on yeast fermentation (cold and warm sugar solutions)
Title (2 points) – must be descriptive and informative; must contain the dependent and independent variables as well as the organism used
Abstract (5 points) – what did you do, how did you do it, what results did you get
Introduction (8 points) – some sort of literature review (what do we already know on this topic; try to reference at least one article describing a related or similar experiment), a hypothesis (what do you expect to happen and why) and predictions. Don’t confuse a hypothesis and predictions. Ask yourself what you expect to happen in this experiment (ie, what results do you expect). These are predictions. Now ask yourself why you expect to get these results. That is your hypothesis. It is a more general statement than the predictions.
Materials and Methods (6 points) – don’t list materials; don’t give methods as a series of instructions. Just give a general over-view of what you did. Do not contain unnecessary information. You can refer to your lab manual for more details and then put the lab manual in your references.
Results (6 points) – begin with a written summary of results; can include tables and figures but they must be numbered, titled, described and referred to from the text (eg, see Figure 1). DO NOT interpret your results here but do include any trends that you see.
Discussion (13 points) – explanation of results (and NOT just a padded repetition of results); do you accept or reject your hypothesis; why is it important to understand this information; can you suggest further experiments or improvements of this experiment. For example, an explanation of osmosis for lab 2 will require that you talk about kinetic energy and the 2nd law of thermodynamics to show why molecules move down concentration gradient.
References (5 points) – must include at least one peer-reviewed research or review article; reference the textbook and lab manual. You can search the data bas in the AU library to look for relevant articles.
