Undergrad: What are Research Procedures supposed to be?

[Michael Sullivan]

I am starting some undergraduate research with Cs-137 and Co-60 gamma-ray shielding. I'm looking for gamma-ray attenuation as well as energy spectra of the gamma-rays through backscattering and a NaI scintillation counter.
I wrote an abstract, designed the testing equipment and set-up and what not, but I don't really know what I am supposed to write as far as procedures. I wrote up step-by-step procedures of what I will physically be doing as well as what each step is attempting to accomplish. My professor just told me that I don't have enough detail and that I should rewrite them.
Could anyone explain what "Experiment Procedures" are supposed to be?

 

[fresh_42]

Here's a template from Durham: https://community.dur.ac.uk/ebse/resources/templates/ExperimentTemplate.pdf
But a Google search on how to write a protocol for an experiment gave many more, e.g. http://orrp.osu.edu/files/2011/10/GuidelinesforWritingaResearchProtocol.pdf from Ohio State.
I would look whether something similar exists for your institute.

 

[Michael Sullivan]

Okay, cool! Thankyou, I appreciate it. I tried to google it but didn't really know what I was looking for, so even if I stumbled on something good, I didn't know if it applied to my situation. I haven't found anything on my universities website, but I'll try to dig deeper.

 

[CrysPhys]

Okay, cool! Thankyou, I appreciate it. I tried to google it but didn't really know what I was looking for, so even if I stumbled on something good, I didn't know if it applied to my situation. I haven't found anything on my universities website, but I'll try to dig deeper.

Doesn't your prof, or other profs in the dept, have copies of what other students have written in the past? That's usually a good place to start.

 

[Michael Sullivan]

My prof is extremely busy and trying to get anything from him is very difficult. I can ask a few of the others, I just hadn't wanted to yet.

 

[fresh_42]

I found the template from Durham excellent, and the British are generally quite good at setting standards. At least it provides you a list of topics to compare your work with, in case you don't want to follow the given structure.