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Your Name October 15th, 2012 BIO181 005B Drymala

Title of Some Sort Abstract Have you written the rest of your paper yet? Your abstract should be written last and should include approximately two sentences per section including the introduction, methods, discussion, and conclusions. Do not give detailed information, but just enough to summarize the main points of each section. Also, you should never site anything in your abstract and if you follow the instructions in the previous sentence, you should not need to.

Introduction Have you written your methods and results sections? The introduction should not be written until you have finished these other two sections. When you write an introduction, you should follow the inverted triangle format. The inverted triangle simply says that you should start off with the broad context of your paper, then slowly narrow down your focus. If you do this correctly, the end of your introduction will discuss the specific issue that you are addressing in your paper, which provides a nice transition to your methods section. In the specific case of your lake lab report, start with some broad information about lakes and lake ecology. You can talk about things like what a lake is, how the form, their zones, physical properties, biology, and so on. This is where you should include a reference to a primary source. Find a primary source that discusses something related to biological or physical properties of lakes. Be very careful to use an actual primary source and not a secondary source.

Next, you can go on to discuss how we investigated the specific case of Lake Wheeler, just south of Raleigh, North Carolina. You do not need to speak in the context of this being done in a BIO181 lab, but can speak in more general terms. You only need to include specifics if they are directly relevant to the science being done. The fact that we drove to the lake on a bus on September 17 has no effect on or relevance to the data that we gathered, so you do not need to tell me these details. Instead, you can talk about some of the general features of Lake Wheeler, such as the weather, size, human activity, wildlife, and so on.

Methods This is where you start writing your lab report. As I mentioned in the introduction, I do not need specifics unless they are directly relevant to the collection of data. Just tell me what equipment was used and the important details in the use of that equipment. The next paragraph is an example. We used a dissolved oxygen meter to determine the dissolved oxygen (DO) levels and temperature at various depths in the lake. Before use, the dissolved oxygen meter was calibrated. Measurements of DO and temperature were taken at 50 cm increments from the surface to a depth of 250 cm, never allowing the sensor to remain in any one location for very long, due to the fact that oxygen is consumed by the sensor during measurement, thereby decreasing oxygen levels in the vicinity of the sensor. That is the extent to which each piece of equipment and procedure needs to be described. Some may require a bit more, some a bit less. You do not need to say who did the measurements. By using we you are referring to the class in general. Specifics are not necessary in this case. You need to describe each procedure that the CLASS did, whether or not your team did it. If you are going to present the results for something (see the assignment sheet for what is needed), you need to provide the methods involved in getting those results.

Results You should have already written your methods, but this is the second step in writing your report. Start with the general trends that you see in the data. If there are odd occurrences in the data or some other unique feature, then you can talk about specifics. You do not need to verbally describe graphs. Graphs and other figures are there to simply be the pretty face of the results; they represent the data and the data is what is important. You should reference your figures in regards to the data, but do not talk about them too specifically.

Discussion Have you written your methods, results, and introduction? This is where you integrate your finding (results) with your previous knowledge (introduction) and discuss possible sources of error (from your methodology). Start with the big trends in the data and what they mean. Are they what you may have expected based on prior knowledge and previous work, or are they different? If they are different from expectation, why might this be? True, it could be due to error, but your results may be perfectly valid. It may be that Lake Wheeler is an exception to the lake rules because of some special factor. One factor we discussed in class is that this is a fairly shallow lake, so turnover and other factors may cause zonation to not be completely clear. It is still important to discuss error though.

Conclusions Have you written all the other parts of the main body of your report? This is the last thing you write other than the abstract. This is where you distil down the main points of report. Talk about the big ideas and the major findings. This is where you demonstrate what you learned. Do not tell me what you learned, show me what you learned.

References Follow the CBE style guide on the course website. The first line of each reference should be all the way to the left, but other lines of the same reference should be indented.

* Above all else, FOLLOW THE RUBRIC!!*

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