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SCI 207: Our Dependence Upon the Environment

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*This template will provide you with the details necessary to finalize a quality Final Lab Report. Utilize this template to complete the Week 5 Final Lab Report and ensure that you are providing all of the necessary information and proper format for the assignment. Before you begin, please note the following important information:

1. Carefully review the Final Lab Report instructions before you begin this assignment.

2. The Final Lab Report should cover the Drinking Water Quality Experiment from your Week Two Lab.

3. Review instructor feedback from the Week Three outline of the Final Lab Report and make changes as necessary.

4. Review the Sample Final Lab Report for an example of a final product on a different topic. Your format should look like this sample report before submission.

5. Make sure your final report is in proper APA format. Use the Sample Final Lab Report as a guide, or obtain an APA Template from the Writing Center.

6. Run your Final Lab Report through Turnitin using the student folder to ensure protection from accidental plagiarism

Title

Abstract

The abstract should provide a brief summary of the methods, results, and conclusions. It should very briefly allow the reader to see what was done, how it was done, and the results. It should not exceed 200 words and should be the last part written (although it should still appear right after the title page).

Introduction

The introduction should describe the background of water quality and related issues using cited examples. You should include scholarly sources in this section to help explain why water quality research is important to society. When writing this section, make sure to cite all resources in APA format.

The introduction should also contain the objective for your study. This objective is the reason why the experiment is being done. Your final report should provide an objective that describes why we want to know the answer to the questions we are asking.

Finally, the introduction should end with your hypothesis. This hypothesis should be the same one posed before you began your experiment. You may reword it following feedback from your instructor to illustrate a proper hypothesis, however, you should not adjust it to reflect the “right” answer. You do not lose points for an inaccurate hypothesis; scientists often revise their hypotheses based on scientific evidence following an experiment. Include an explanation as to why you made the hypothesis that you did.

Materials and Methods

The materials and methods section should provide a brief description of the specialized materials used in your experiment and how they were used. This section needs to summarize the instructions with enough detail so that an outsider who does not have a copy of the lab instructions knows what you did. However, this does not mean writing every little step like “dip the chloride test strip in the water, then shake the test strip,” these steps can be simplified to read “we used chloride test strips to measure the chloride levels of each sample in mg/L”, etc. Additionally, this section should be written in the past tense and in your own words and not copied and pasted from the lab manual.

Results

The results section should include all tables used in your experiments. All values within the tables or graphs should be in numerical form and contain units. For instance, if measuring the amount of chloride in water you should report as 2 mg/L or 0 mg/L, not as two or none.

The results section should also highlight the important results in paragraph form, referring to the appropriate tables when mentioned. This section should only state the results as no personal opinions should be included. A description of what the results really mean should be saved for the discussion. For example, you may report, 0mg/L of chlorine were found in the water, but should avoid personal opinions and interpretations of the data (e.g., “No chlorine was found in the water showing it is cleaner than the others samples”).

Discussion

The discussion section should interpret your data and provide conclusions. Start by discussing whether you accepted or rejected your hypothesis and how you arrived at this decision. In the same section, consider some of the implications of your results. Given the chemical differences you may have noted between the water samples, are any of the differences causes for concern? Why or why not?

The discussion should also relate your results to the bigger water concerns and challenges. For example, based on your experiments you might discuss how various bottled water companies use different filtration systems. Or, you could discuss the billion dollar bottled water industry. For example, do you think it is worth it to buy bottled water? Why or why not? Your final lab report should utilize credible and scholarly resources to put your results into context.

Finally, the results section should also address any possible factors that may have affected your results, such as possible contamination in the experiments or any outside factors (e.g., temperature, contaminants, time of day). If so, how could you control for these in the future? You should also propose some new questions that have arisen from your results and what kind of experiment might be proposed to answer these questions.

Conclusions

The conclusion section should briefly summarize the key findings of your experiment. What main message would you like people to have from this report?

References

Include at least two scholarly references, two credible references, and your lab manual in APA format.