Your Lab Notebook

Without a doubt, somebody reading this book today is going to make an important discovery in the future and will seek a patent. The lab notebook is your legal record of your discovery. Therefore each notebook page should be signed and dated. Anything of potential importance should also be signed and dated by a second person. 

Do not rely on a computer for longterm storage of information. Even if a file survives, software or hardware required to read the file will become obsolete. 

The critical functions of your lab notebook are to state what you did and what you observed, and it should be understandable by a stranger who is trained in your discipline (chemistry in your case). The greatest error is writing ambiguous notes. After a few years, you may not be able to interpret your own notebook when memories of the experiment have faded. Writing in complete sentences is an excellent way to reduce this problem. Box 2-1 gives an example. 

The measure of scientific truth is the ability to reproduce an experiment. A good lab notebook will allow you or anyone else to duplicate an experiment in the exact manner in which it was conducted the first time. 

Beginning students find it useful (or required ) to write a complete description of an experiment, with sections describing the purpose, methods, results, and conclusions. Arranging your notebook to accept numerical data prior to coming to the lab is an excellent way to prepare for an experiment. 

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Your lab partner has measured the mass of your sample to be 2,500 g. How can you record this more nicely (without scientific notation) in your lab notebook using a metric system prefix ... 

Documentation means labeling. If your spreadsheet cannot be read by another person without your help, it needs better documentation. (The same is true of your lab notebook )... 

Safety requires you to think in advance about what you will do never do anything that seems dangerous. Know how to use safety equipment such as goggles, fume hood, lab coat, gloves, emergency shower, eyewash, and fire extinguisher. Chemicals should be stored and used in a manner that minimizes contact of solids, liquids, and vapors with people. Environmentally acceptable disposal procedures should be established in advance for every chemical that you use. Your lab notebook tells what you did and what you observed it should be understandable to other people. It also should allow you to repeat an experiment in the same manner in the future. You should understand the principles of operation of electronic and mechanical balances and treat them as delicate equipment. Buoyancy corrections are required in accurate work. Burets should be read in a reproducible manner and drained slowly for best results. Always interpolate between markings to obtain accuracy one deci-... 

Experimental instructions may be provided by your supervisor for practical reports. With project work, your lab notebook (see p. 67) should provide the basis for writing this section. 

Write down any questions you have in your lab notebook so that you can ask your teacher about them before the lab begins. 

Jot down notes in your lab notebook as you find clues. 

The company will consider your performance on the test in deciding whether to hire you and determining what your initial salary will be. Pay close attention to the procedures and safety precautions because you will continue to use them throughout your work if you are hired by this company. In addition, you will need to pay attention to what is happening around you, make careful observations, and keep a clear and legible record of these observations in your lab notebook. 

Copy Data Tables 1 and 2 in your lab notebook. Be sure that you have plenty of room for observations about each test. 

Record in your lab notebook the location and use of the following emergency items lab shower, eyewash station, and emergency telephone numbers. 

Using crucible tongs, hold a 10 cm piece of copper wire for 2-3 s in the part of the flame labeled a in Figure B. Repeat this step for the parts of the flame labeled b and c. Record your observations in your lab notebook. 

After recording the constant mass, set aside a part of your sample on a piece of weighing paper. Using the dropper or pipet, as shown in Figure B, put a few drops of water onto this sample to rehydrate the crystals. Record your observations in your lab notebook. 

Copy the data table below in your lab notebook. Reactions 1 and 3 will each require two additional spaces to record the mass of the empty watch glass and the mass of the watch glass with NaOH. 

Copy the data table below in your lab notebook. 

Put exactly 5.0 mL of water in the 10.0 mL graduated cylinder. Record this volume in the data table in your lab notebook. Fill the first dropper or pipet with water. This dropper should be labeled Acid. Do not use this dropper for the base solution. Holding the dropper vertical, add 20 drops of water to the cylinder. For the best results, keep the sizes of the drops as even as possible throughout this investigation. Record the new volume of water in the first data table as Trial 1. 

Observe as many physical properties of the balls as possible, and record your observations in your lab notebook. 

Place approximately 200 mL of wastewater sample into a clean, dry 250-mL beaker using a graduated cylinder. Record the volume of sample in your lab notebook. 

Obtain one or more soil samples from a hazardous waste site. Alternatively, your instructor may have a series of fortified soils available in the laboratory. An illustration of how a series of laboratory fortified acidic, neutral, and alkaline soils can be prepared and given to students as sample unknowns is shown in Table 5.3. Implement EPA Method 9045C while reviewing its details. Assume that the unknown soil is noncalcareous. Notice the use of flowcharts in helping to understand the procedural aspects of the method. Repeat the pH measurement for the four other samples and record your results in your laboratory notebook. The chemical nature of the contaminated soil samples will be revealed to you after you have completed your pH measurements. Rationalize the observed pH value for each soil based on a knowledge of the chemical used to contaminate the soil. Write your comments into your lab notebook. 

Sometimes you may have finished the chemical activity in a lab and simply be working on calculations, writing notes in your lab notebook. Since other students may still be working with chemicals, you must keep your goggles on while in the lab to prevent unintended exposure. 

Your lab notebook should (1) state what was done, (2) state what was observed, and (3) be understandable to someone else who is trained in your discipline. The passage below was extracted in 2002 from my notebook of 1974 when, as a postdoc at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, I began to isolate the iron storage... 

Dispose of all development solvent in the container for nonhalogenated organic solvents. Dispose of the ethanol-methylene chloride mixture in the container for halogenated organic solvents. The micropipettes used for spotting the solution should be placed in a special container labeled for that purpose. The TLC plates should be stapled in your lab notebook. 

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