Taking upper division physics lab full lab reports due every

I have a lab every other week and I want to hang myself every time I write them

t. engineer

You don't. If you want a career in research, you might as well start planning your suicide.

>>8386682
I enjoy writing lab reports. If you don't want to do actual physics, switch to an english major and become the next ndt.

>>8386818

I think I'm figuring it out that I like learning physics more than doing physics, but that's what undergrad is for.

>>8386682
Lab reports take some time, but they are not hard to do. After a while those 15 pages go down like nothing. Had do write maybe fifty of them. I'm glad it's over, but it wasn't quite as bad as you make it out to be.

>>8386818
>Lab
>Actual physics
Not really

>>8386829
If you can afford to learn for the sake of learning, good on you. Most of us need to see a return on investment though.

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385KB, 819x1600px

>tfw freshman
>spend 8 hours on a lab report
>tfw B+ on it

>>8386883
Our upper division lab consisted of 1 semester of writing code, and building aparatus and then using it all to do classic modern physics experiments. The second semester of the class was a faculty guided research project, some of which got published. Mine was on non invasive technique of measuring surface tension of liquids. Hate to break it to you, but that's what 99% of real physics is. Design, control and analysis of industrial processes.

>>8386900
That's simply not the rule though. Most physics labs consist of repeating mind numbing experiments, evaluating them and then sending in an overly long lab report. You probably just go to a university that focuses particularly on these things, good for you. No need for the arrogant, condescending shit tone though.

>not doing fun chem labs
physics cucks btfo

Any tips for writing good reports? Always seems to be my weakness when it comes to labs

>>8387023
Every university has their own standards. I've heard of universities that only wants two page reports with nothing but the most essential information, other universities want very long reports including all necessary theoretical basics and an explanation of every important part of the setup. My university demanded the latter.

>Proper format and plots
Is the formatting standard (the way you see it in most papers, you'll figure it out), is it consistent (e.g. don't mix Fig.~\ref{...} and Figure \ref{...}, stuff like that).
Are the plots sufficiently large? Can you differentiate the different graphs in the plot? Are all plots correctly labelled (Quantitiy / Unit)? Legends? Correct captions (meaning not just "Fig. 4: Plot of the temperature." or some shit like that, a proper description that stands on its own)

>Good language
No overly long sentences, use the correct terms for everything, obviously orthography, grammar etc. At my uni it was advertised to avoid active formulation ("In this experiment we determined that...").

>To the point theory
No bullshitting around, introduce and explain every formula that is used in the evaluation, no unnecessary shit.

>Complete
Yeah, that is obvious.

>Correct evaluation
Also pretty obvious, but make sure everything is correctly evaluated with proper errors (also, do NOT write something like "(0.557761 ± 0.1188) T", I see that shit so often). Also make sure that everything is perfectly consistent and comprehensive. No number needs to come from nowhere and no symbol should remain unexplained.

>Sources
Yeah, provide sources for all images and physical constants.

Every assistant has different standards as well. Sometimes they are alright with even quite major fuckups, but I had an assistant return the report because there was a \ instead of a \, between a number and the unit and because he didn't like the formatting in one table.

>>8387076
Cheers senpai. Saved

>>8387076
>also, do NOT write something like "(0.557761 ± 0.1188) T", I see that shit so often
What's wrong with that?

>>8387122
Significant digits should always match in the mean and error at least. Also, it makes little sense to write 1.1778964 ± 0.0667188 as most of those digits have no meaning considering the huge error. It's sufficient to just write it as 1.18 ± 0.07 or maybe 1.178 ± 0.067. But anything more is just ridiculous.

>>8386962
I was attacked, it wasn't condescending, it was the truth. Upper level labs are similar to the work you would do in a lab job with your degree.