- #1
Angry Citizen
- 607
- 0
I've seen some threads on PF discussing the labs in physics, engineering, and chem, and something just seems.. off. People are talking about how their lab reports are ten or twenty pages long, handwritten, and/or take many many hours. This doesn't seem to jive with my own lab experience.
I took my first year physics and chem at a community college. The physics labs consisted of very easy pre-lab questions which we answered by looking through the lab manual for that particular lab. Then the labs themselves were largely jotting down numbers and observations. After the lab usually came some calculations, which were often difficult and required some level of independent thought. Then came the post-lab questions in which we responded in essay format to about five or six questions (usually -- sometimes more, sometimes less). These responses were never more than one or two paragraphs. The chem labs consisted of data, calculations, and occasionally a short-answer which was always much easier than the physics labs. All told, the prelabs were about one page, the calculations/data usually about two, maybe three, and the post-lab an additional page. Nothing like those ten or twenty page handwritten reports!
My questions are: Am I going to be ill-prepared in my aerospace engineering classes for those mammoth lab reports that everyone talks about? What exactly did these lab reports consist of? What can I do now that I'm transferring to a very large and presumably rigorous university that will require me to take several classes with labs?
I took my first year physics and chem at a community college. The physics labs consisted of very easy pre-lab questions which we answered by looking through the lab manual for that particular lab. Then the labs themselves were largely jotting down numbers and observations. After the lab usually came some calculations, which were often difficult and required some level of independent thought. Then came the post-lab questions in which we responded in essay format to about five or six questions (usually -- sometimes more, sometimes less). These responses were never more than one or two paragraphs. The chem labs consisted of data, calculations, and occasionally a short-answer which was always much easier than the physics labs. All told, the prelabs were about one page, the calculations/data usually about two, maybe three, and the post-lab an additional page. Nothing like those ten or twenty page handwritten reports!
My questions are: Am I going to be ill-prepared in my aerospace engineering classes for those mammoth lab reports that everyone talks about? What exactly did these lab reports consist of? What can I do now that I'm transferring to a very large and presumably rigorous university that will require me to take several classes with labs?