Laboratory Directions

The goal of the laboratory experience is to help you to become familiar with different types of instrumentation. Ideally, you should leave the course with an ability to approach a wide variety of instruments. The theme of the lab experience for this fall is EPA standard methods of analysis. Many of these will plug directly into the institution’s efforts to study water quality in the San Gabriel River. Therefore, all of the work you do this semester will not only be beneficial to you but will also help understand ongoing environmental challenges in our local community.

You will work in a group of 2 on this project. Each lab will last approximately 2 weeks. This should allow you to try your method once and then troubleshoot if you have problems. You will want to experiment with instrumental parameters to get the best data that you can. Please plan to spend at least 8 hours on each project.

The list of due dates and types of experiments can be found below:

Experiment	Beginning Date	Due Date	General Topic or Instrument
1	9/10	9/24	Atomic Absorption of Metals in Water
2	9/24	10/8	UV-vis Determination of Phosphate in Soil
3	10/8	10/21	Ammonia Determination by ISE
4	10/21	11/4	Infrared based Method
5	11/4	11/16	Gas Chromatography Method
6	11/26	12/7	GC-mass spec Method

GUIDELINES FOR LABORATORY REPORTS

The lab reports are an important exercise to help bring together the content covered in the course and the experimental work done in the lab. The lab work is worth a fairly large percentage of your grade and should be given an appropriate amount of your effort.

The report should follow the basic outline below:

1. Abstract: This is a 4-5 sentence summary of your experiment. It is important to include the significance of your experiment and the big result(s). This is best written last.

2. A brief introduction that describes the purpose of the experiment and some general remarks about the instrumental method used. Please include a discussion about why the instrument is a good choice for your experiment. What are its advantages and disadvantages. 2-4 paragraphs should be sufficient.

3. Experimental. This section should briefly describe how the samples were prepared and how the data were taken. It is important to include all relevant instrumental parameters that someone would need to duplicate the experiment as well as the make and model of the instrument used. Make it clear if you are following a standard protocol (such as an EPA method)

4. Results and Discussion: Even though meticulous notes have been kept in your laboratory notebook, reorganization is necessary because data are taken chronologically in the laboratory, whereas the report must present a logical sequence. Data in tabular form can be particularly useful and easy to interpret. Spectra may be condensed into plots which overlap several spectra or spectra may be attached to the end of the report. Please use technology such that all figures and tables are included in the body of your text. This section includes calculations, analysis of errors, and presentation of derived data in graphical or analytical form: standard deviations, curve fitting etc. are included here. The second part of this section is the discussion of your results. This is an intellectual exercise in which you demonstrate your ability to assimilate the pertinent facts from the literature and compare that data with those you report, discussing certain trends that may show that particular laws or principles have been obeyed or significant deviations have occurred. A discussion of the sources of error should also be included.

5. Conclusions: In this section you begin by restating the most important results of your experiments. (i.e. we have found that compound X is present at 50 ppm in soil) The second function is to discuss future directions for this work. For the purpose of the lab report, pretend like you are planning to do the next experiment. What would you do? Would you repeat the experiment under different conditions? Would you look at different samples?

Laboratory reports will be word-processed and data and spectra where possible will be printed out on the computer. I am most familiar with Microsoft Office which includes Microsoft Word for word processing and Microsoft Excel for data analysis and graphing. You may choose to use any program you want but my ability to help you will be limited for software with which I am not well acquainted.