The Laboratory Notebook

Obtain a bound notebook with quadrille paper (lA squares). The graph paper will help you line up tables, charts, and so on. Never remove sheets from the notebook. 

Consult your instructor as to whether you are to use pen or pencil. Pen is generally preferred (and cross-outs are permitted). 

Always use a ruler to make straight lines. A French Curve is often useful for other types of graphical representations also, see VI (below). 

On the outside of the notebook, and in ink, print your name, class title, instructor s name and course title as neatly as you can in block letters. 

The first page of the notebook is the title page, where you, as neatly as possible, place your name, class title, instructor s name, semester and year, institution, and (if you wish) your address, e-mail address, and phone number. Consult your instructor for placement of these items. 

A laboratory notebook is needed to record measurements and observations concerning an analysis. The book should be permanently bound with consecutively numbered pages (if necessary, the pages should be hand numbered before any entries are made). Most notebooks have more than ample room there is no need to crowd entries. 

The first few pages should be saved for a table of contents that is updated as entries are made. 

Record all data and observations directly into the notebook in ink. Neatness is desirable, but you should not achieve neatness by transcribing data from a sheet of paper to the notebook or from one notebook to another. The risk of misplacing—or incorrectly transcribing—crucial data and thereby ruining an experiment is unacceptable. 

Supply each entry or series of entries with a heading or label. A series of weighing data for a set of empty crucibles should carry the heading empty crucible mass (or something similar), for example, and the mass of each crucible should be identified by the same number or letter used to label the crucible. Date each page of the notebook as it is used. 

Never attempt to erase or obliterate an incorrect entry. Instead, cross it out with a single horizontal line and locate the correct entry as nearby as possible. Do not write over incorrect numbers with time, it may become impossible to distinguish the correct entry from the incorrect one. 

Writing is the most important method chemists use to communicate their work. It begins with the record kept in a laboratory notebook. An experiment originally recorded in the laboratory notebook can become the source of information used to prepare scientific papers published in journals or presented at meetings. For the industrial chemist, these written records are critical in obtaining patent coverage for new discoveries. 

It is important that you learn to keep a detailed account of your work. A laboratory notebook has several key components. Note how each component is incorporated into the example that follows. 

---

Finally, we cannot end a chapter on the basic tools of analytical chemistry without mentioning the laboratory notebook. Your laboratory notebook is your most important tool when working in the lab, providing a complete record of all your work. If kept properly, you should be able to look back at your laboratory notebook several years from now and reconstruct the experiments on which you worked. 

Kanare, H. M. Writing the Laboratory Notebook, American Chemical Society Washington, DC 1985. 

The Laboratory Notebook Page. Most engineers, scientists, and technicians make a record of their work. A common form of record... 

From the laboratory notebook. Alchem Lab Bulls, no. 13 (Q4 1962). rhttp //www.spagyria.com/alb.zip1. 

If a reference "teaches away" from some research activity (e.g., selecting a particular chemotype for modification, modifying a chemo-type in a specific fashion, or making a particular salt form), note this in the laboratory notebook and in the invention disclosure form. 

An experiment should always be performed at known temperature. Furthermore, the temperature should be constant throughout the course of the experiment, and should be noted in the laboratory notebook. 

Consider again the laboratory notebook. Auditing can be accomplished with ease by checking for erasures, cross-outs, overwrites, and other data point changes. Approval is designated with a human signa-... 

As one might expect, accountability is more stringent for substances classified in Schedules I and II. These compounds can be procured only from licensed sources, and amounts are recorded. After a certain period of time, the quantities of drug used, which have been recorded and witnessed in the laboratory notebook are tabulated and compared with amount remaining (unused), and the original amount issued. The balance is usually returned, or destroyed in the presence of an authorized witness. Dilute standard solutions can be purchased, in limited quantities, usually... 

In both academia and industry, the laboratory notebook is a legal document that records the work done by an individual researcher. Even in the USPTO s own view, its Disclosure Document Program does not diminish the value of the conventional, witnessed, permanently bound, and page-numbered laboratory notebook or notarized records [6]. Without a doubt, any experimental work might be worthless unless it is properly recorded for later use. Evidence of the dates of conception and reduction to practice of an invention may be established by a well-maintained laboratory notebook. Therefore, researchers should become familiar with how to keep persuasive laboratory notebooks. Of course, no notebook is ever perfect. However, the closer one comes to this objective, the better it will be. 

Researchers are often uncertain about the scope of descripdon of their experiments to be included when preparing a lab notebook. First of all, it is important to realize that the laboratory notebook serves not only for corroboradon of the reduc-... 

Fig. 1. An entry from the laboratory notebook of Sir Humphry Davy for the period October 1805-October 1812. The entry is for November 1808 a more precise location is rather difficult, but various entries around the same period suggest November 14 as the most likely date. Reproduced by courtesy of the Royal Institution, London, England.

Carry out experiments as requested and enter details in the laboratory notebook daily. 

When it comes to the legal requirements for the protection of intellectual property the position is not so clear-cut. For instance in the US the PTO issues patents on the basis of the date of invention, i.e. the date in the laboratory notebook, not the date of application as is the case with other countries. 

---