The Laboratory Notebook

THE LABORATORY NOTEBOOK

An important requirement in organic chemistry lab is the maintaining of a permanent, accurate, and complete account of your work in a bound, laboratory notebook. You should record the experimental procedure, your observations, and results in as much detail as practical. Sometimes the results are different than those anticipated from the prescribed procedures; these experimental difficulties should be noted as well. A detailed record is especially important in research and serves as the legal document for patent disputes. Although you probably will not be filing for a patent based on results from this laboratory, learning how to keep an accurate and complete account of your work is very important in many professions.

There are many acceptable formats for a notebook. In this course, however, you should adhere to the following guidelines, which will be used in grading your reports.

1. Use a bound, hardcover composition book, like those available in the college bookstore. Pages may be removed easily from a loose leaf or spiral bound notebook and thus these types of notebooks are unacceptable.

2. Write your name on the front cover.

3. Write in permanent ink to ensure permanency.

4. Use only the right hand pages for the actual write-up in order to maintain neatness.

5. Number these right-hand pages of the notebook consecutively. Under no circumstances should a page ever be removed from the book.

6. The first page should be reserved for a table of contents.

7. Begin every new experiment on a new page.

8. Record all data and observations directly in the notebook and not on scratch paper, which is easily lost.

9. Never erase any entries

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