Tips to writing up a successful lab

You must get a passing grade in the practicals to pass the course. Here are some specific pitfalls to avoid in writing up your labs.

1. Draw what you see. Do not improvise! Be accurate!

• Plant cells do not bulge into each other as this student has drawn.
• Each of these cells contains many chloroplasts. The student has drawn one per cell!
• The thread-like cells at the bottom are slender and of constant diameter - not as they have been drawn. Get the relative proportions right!

2.    It is important that you include the magnification. You are approximating the magnification crudely. To give a magnification or scale bar to 5 significant figures is absolutely ludicrous, e.g. 266.67 µm (this is the value obtained by a mathematical calculation but you should report this as 270 or even 300 µm bearing in mind the size approximation method we are using).  Make sure the magnification is realistic, guided by the fact that the average plant cell is 50 µm in length.

3.    Labels are essential. Try not to have labelling lines going right through a diagram.

4.    Use nice clean lines. Don't sketch like in the diagram above. Don't shade or cross-hatch.

5.    Don't make repetitive diagrams. You can use dotted lines to indicate the plant continues according to the same substructure and then revert to a proper diagram at the end.

6.    Do not combine low-power (map) and high-power detailed diagrams. You must not just put in a few cells here and there at your whim in a amp diagram.