Baller97 Posted November 23, 2014 Report Share Posted November 23, 2014 Any tips/advice on how to write up the lab reports (IA's) for Chemistry? Like, anything I should/should not do? I'm in IB year 2 and I'm still struggling..All help is highly appreciated! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vioh Posted November 23, 2014 Report Share Posted November 23, 2014 Any tips/advice on how to write up the lab reports (IA's) for Chemistry? Like, anything I should/should not do? I'm in IB year 2 and I'm still struggling.. All help is highly appreciated! Can you be a little bit more precise with what you're struggling with? With current information, i can only give you some general tips: 1. Spend a bit of time to read through all the criteria listed on the IB subject guide 2. Check out this link Chemistry IA Guide.pdf 3. Design part: Be creative, and very detailed in your description. Also think about whether the experiment will be reliable or not 4. Data processing part: Practice with excel a lot. If you don't know how to do something with excel, search the instruction on youtube. Try to use precise language in this part (e.g. accurate numbers of significant figures, decimal places, scientific notations, etc). Also make sure you know how to calculate propagation of errors, because IB really looks into that 4. Conclusion/Evaluation: with evaluation, just try to come up with all possible sources of errors, and provide a plausible improvement to the experimental procedure. For the conclusion, make sure you compare your results with other literature values to calculate the uncertainty/credibility of your experiments That's all I can come up with now. You can also tell us what you're struggling with and we'll try to help you more 3 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Sonia Posted November 23, 2014 Report Share Posted November 23, 2014 I'd say keep the organization exactly as given in the criteria. And tbh if you do exactly what the criteria say then you're fine... A tip I got from my teacher (who is the most perfectionist person alive) is to make an apparatus & material table and put pictures for each one (imo it looks very pretty). We can PM if you want some more help Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baller97 Posted November 24, 2014 Author Report Share Posted November 24, 2014 Great!! Thanks guys for the help really appreciate it Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julio17 Posted December 13, 2014 Report Share Posted December 13, 2014 Hi, I think my teacher is being too radical regarding the chem IA's.. please help me as none of my classmates are getting good grades... My teacher makes us do all the Design, DCP, CE in CLASS, in test conditions, when we finish the experiments, we have to sit down and do the DCP, without asking him or any of our classmates, and without looking things up on the internet. He provides us with a sheet of paper and everything has to be handwritten.So a week before the Lab is conducted he explains the procedure to us and answers questions, and we have to study the topic in question so that we know how to do the calculations... There is no draft or feedback, what we produce in those 45 minutes under test conditions is our final 'report'... His justification for this is that this is the only way that he can ensure that we don't copy from our friends or from the internet, and that he is following IB regulations, if he let us take it home there is no way for him to prove to the IB that what we produce is what we actually know... Isn't this wrong or too radical? What do other schools do? Thanks! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vioh Posted December 13, 2014 Report Share Posted December 13, 2014 Hi, I think my teacher is being too radical regarding the chem IA's.. please help me as none of my classmates are getting good grades...My teacher makes us do all the Design, DCP, CE in CLASS, in test conditions, when we finish the experiments, we have to sit down and do the DCP, without asking him or any of our classmates, and without looking things up on the internet. He provides us with a sheet of paper and everything has to be handwritten.So a week before the Lab is conducted he explains the procedure to us and answers questions, and we have to study the topic in question so that we know how to do the calculations... There is no draft or feedback, what we produce in those 45 minutes under test conditions is our final 'report'...His justification for this is that this is the only way that he can ensure that we don't copy from our friends or from the internet, and that he is following IB regulations, if he let us take it home there is no way for him to prove to the IB that what we produce is what we actually know...Isn't this wrong or too radical? What do other schools do? That is definitely wrong & too radical. I'm definitely sure that all other schools allow their students to do the 'final' lab reports at home. First, your teacher can definitely use plagiarism checker to check whether you have plagiarized or not. Secondly, lab reports are not considered to be a 'test'. Therefore, you should definitely report him to your IB-coordinator! 2 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julio17 Posted December 13, 2014 Report Share Posted December 13, 2014 Hi, I think my teacher is being too radical regarding the chem IA's.. please help me as none of my classmates are getting good grades...My teacher makes us do all the Design, DCP, CE in CLASS, in test conditions, when we finish the experiments, we have to sit down and do the DCP, without asking him or any of our classmates, and without looking things up on the internet. He provides us with a sheet of paper and everything has to be handwritten.So a week before the Lab is conducted he explains the procedure to us and answers questions, and we have to study the topic in question so that we know how to do the calculations... There is no draft or feedback, what we produce in those 45 minutes under test conditions is our final 'report'...His justification for this is that this is the only way that he can ensure that we don't copy from our friends or from the internet, and that he is following IB regulations, if he let us take it home there is no way for him to prove to the IB that what we produce is what we actually know...Isn't this wrong or too radical? What do other schools do? That is definitely wrong & too radical. I'm definitely sure that all other schools allow their students to do the 'final' lab reports at home. First, your teacher can definitely use plagiarism checker to check whether you have plagiarized or not. Secondly, lab reports are not considered to be a 'test'. Therefore, you should definitely report him to your IB-coordinator! Thanks a lot for your answer, but let me just correct myself here:He has changed the process a little now... Before we conduct the experiment, he explains how to do the calculations (without real values, he only gives us the results under the test conditions that I explained earlier) so that we can go home, learn the calculations and do them under test conditions, the rest is all the same, no draft, no aid during the ia, etc... Do you still think this is wrong?Thanks a lot... Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vioh Posted December 14, 2014 Report Share Posted December 14, 2014 Thanks a lot for your answer, but let me just correct myself here:He has changed the process a little now... Before we conduct the experiment, he explains how to do the calculations (without real values, he only gives us the results under the test conditions that I explained earlier) so that we can go home, learn the calculations and do them under test conditions, the rest is all the same, no draft, no aid during the ia, etc... Do you still think this is wrong?Thanks a lot... I'm not in the position to say whether it's wrong to do so, simply because im not a teacher/examiner. However, I can assure you that no other school has done like this before. Besides, your teacher doesn't have any good justification for this: 1. Your teacher said that this is to make sure that students don't plagiarize? Well, there's a plagiarism checker for goodness sake!2. Forcing students to write lab reports by hands are actually against one of the most important aspects of IB, which is to be able to use technology. How can you analyze complex set of data without excel? Sorry, but most of data analysis & lab reports are done on the computer nowadays. Not using computers is really medieval....3. Doing a lab report is not similar as doing a test because a lab is a project. To make the lab report successful, students must be able to think hard and to research on internet & books. Some science teachers nowadays should stop making everything looking like a test because the whole point of science class is really to help students enjoy the subject; hence a lab should really be a fun project to students rather than a nasty little test....4. Lastly, a lab report is not only about DCP, but also about CE as well. Some groups may have done the lab correctly and thus will get a perfect result. But what about those who get bad results for the experiments? they need time to think about the things that could possibly have gone wrong with their experiments. Thus, giving students time to go home to do the labs is the best way to encourage them to think of the flaws within experimental procedure. All in all, I'm deeply convinced that this is not the way how lab reports should be done. So good luck convincing your teacher and your coordinator. Your teacher must be super, super, super, and.... super bad, because i really can't understand this kind of dictatorship at your school.... Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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