Grading and General Policies for My 114/123/143 Labs

To me, grades aren't the most important point about these labs; but they may be to some of you. Also, it's pretty important that you know what the department and I expect from you, and know also what you can expect from me as far as grades and policies. So I'll go over some of the basic points below.

Attendance and Participation at Labs

This is pretty simple; everybody has to do all the labs, or you fail the course. That's not my rule, it's the department's rule, and they have some pretty good reasons for it. So, I expect everyone to show up, and I will take attendance. (Attendance per se won't be a part of your grade, but it has what should be an obvious effect on your lab-report grades.)

Makeups

What if you can't (or don't want to) come to your lab one time? Well, as you'll see below, unless you have a good reason you should anyway; but here's how it should be handled:

If you can't do the lab for whatever reason, you should make arrangements to do it in one of the other lab sections during the time when that lab is being done. Of course, you'll have to ask the permission of the TA for that other lab section, since if it's full they may not let you come in to do your lab.
If you do this, then try to get your lab report turned in either by the normal deadline or as soon as possible afterwards.
Failing that, there is a lab-make-up time at the end of the semester. But it's not for doing all the labs at the end that you couldn't be bothered to come to during the semester; so, my policy (for my sections only) is that anybody can makeup any 1 lab during that time at the end of the semester for whatever reason; if you want to makeup a second lab, it had better be one that you had an excuse (read: a good reason) for missing that you had talked to me about before that makeup period, or I won't grade it.
Why? I have finals and end-of-semester stress just like everyone else, and I don't want to get dumped on then. Isn't this a little Draconian? No. Look, you only have five (5) labs to do; just come and do them.
Here's how doing a lab late or makeup will affect your grade for that lab:
1. If you have a legitimate excuse, and turn in the lab report within a week from when you did the lab, then there's of course no penalty.
2. If you don't have an excuse and do the lab later in the week in another section, but turn it in by the normal deadline, then you'll lose half a point.
3. If you don't have an excuse and turn in the lab after the normal deadline, then it'll start being considered late and the late-lab penalty applies.
4. If you make up a lab at the end of the semester which you didn't have an excuse for, then it's automatically considered late by a week right off the bat.
I don't really want to penalize people; it's not the sort of thing that makes me happy. But neither is getting labs turned in at all sorts of random times during the semester many weeks after the lab was done...

What I Need from You

Note: These are my preferences, and clearly only apply to sections which I'm running...

Before you come to lab

Please try to read over the lab experiment description in the lab manual; it would also help to come to the lab lecture. Of course, if you have questions after the lab lecture, then either remember them to ask at the beginning of lab, or email me about it.
Also, remember to do your prelab assignment.
Finally, have a look at these web pages; I'll try to have sections on each lab up before or right after the lab lecture, and I'll try to make them useful as well as interesting to read.

When you come to lab

Give me your prelab assignment. I'll go over it at the beginning of the lab just to make sure everybody understands what it was about, but I need them turned in before I do so, of course... :-)
Remember to sign the attendance sheet. I should know that you're there anyway, but just to make sure there's no doubt or miscommunication...
If it isn't the first week and I don't give you back your last lab reports, remind me. However, I'd appreciate it if questions about the write-up or grade were left until after the lab or, better yet, office hours.
We have sheets there at the lab that you can use as data sheets, and they're already set up with spots for your name and partner's name, etc., and they're all a nice, uniform, cheerful shade of green so they stand out more. I'll go over (below) how they're intended to be used, but I'm not going to force you to use them. In fact, I think it might be a really good thing if you made up your own "data sheets" which set out what things you need to write down and keep track of for each section of the lab. That way, it'll help set in your mind what you need to do, and can make the lab go more smoothly, and might even help you keep your data sheets neater (but see below).
There are certain policy requirements about your data sheets:
1. Each data sheet much have the names of all lab partners on it.
2. Each data sheet must be dated (but I'm going to date them even if you don't...)
3. At least the first data sheet should have the experiment number and the lab section on it.
4. I have to sign and date each and every data sheet before you leave the lab that day.
  Note that in general when I say "I" or "me", I'm including the TIs in that as well (the undergraduate TAs that are helping to run the labs). But this is an exception: only the lab section's main TA (i.e., the one that does the grading) can sign off on the data sheets.
5. The intention is that you use the green data sheets and the clipboards along with the carbon sheets which we'll provide, to make a carbon copy that you leave with me at the end of the lab. This is a good idea for a few reasons:
  1. Sometimes students lose their data sheets. If you do and you left me a carbon copy, then I'll give you a signed Xerox copy so you can write up your lab. If you lose your data sheets and I don't have a copy, then you'll just have to do the lab over.
  2. I don't even want to have to think about this, but students have been known to change data on their data sheets after the lab, to make their numbers work out better. If I have a copy, this provides an obvious incentive for folks not to change their data. I have ways of noticing this without having the copies, though, so just don't try to cheat...
  3. Every student must have an original copy of the data sheet.
    I guess that phrase "original copy" sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, but here's what I mean. You do the labs in a group, hopefully just a group of two, but you do the writeups individually. So each person needs to have a copy of the data sheets to attach to the back of his/her lab report. What "original" means is that any and all data sheets must have my original sign-and-date on them, i.e., you can't just Xerox your lab partner's data sheets and get any credit. So what should you do? There are a few different options, and here are my thoughts:
    - If you really want to have both partners independently recording the same data at the same time on their own data sheets that's fine by me, but in my impression it's confusing and not a good division of labour, especially on some of the longer labs. In general, it might be better for one person to read out a measurement and the other write it down. This should keep confusion to a minimum on the data sheets.
    - If you get done early, you could copy out the data from the sheets onto another set of data sheets for the other partner (or use an extra carbon paper as described above). This is typically what you should do.
    - If you're running out of time, bring up the one set of data sheets and another set of blank data sheets with just the partners' names on it, and I'll be willing to sign off on those so you can get together after the lab to hand-copy over the data (if you had a great deal of numbers to transfer or were just running out of time).

After you've done the lab

The completed lab report (see below for guidelines) is due one week after the end of your lab section.
Put your lab report into the locker with the appropriate TA's name (mine, if you're in one of my sections) on it. The Lab TA lockers have coloured name-tags on them so they should be easy to identify.

What I'm Looking for in a Lab Report

Note: This only really applies to people in my lab sections, as all the TAs will have their own preferences and ideosyncracies. However, I'd guess that most of the TAs would agree with some of the more general comments below.

In general

Read the relevant general sections from the lab manual, and look at the sample lab report there.
If you have a question, ask me. If it's something that really doesn't matter to me, I'll tell you.
The report should be neat (but see the section on data sheets below).
- This doesn't mean you need to use a computer; do so if you want to by all means, and it's yet another way to get more familiar with using computers, but I really don't care. When I was doing the equivalent of these labs (at USC), we had to hand-write all of our lab reports (the first semester, we had to do it during the lab time and turn it in finished before we left! That was annoying), so I understand the value of having a choice.
- I suppose I should encourage you to make use of the computers and printers that are going to be available down on the first floor in the second-lab room for 123/143 labs; after all, they're there for your use, and much of the time there'll be a TA or TI in there to ask computer- or report-related questions of, and if the computers get much use then we'll have some chance of getting better computers down there. However, use whatever you want. (Personally, hate using Word and Excel so I use other programs; but it just doesn't matter...)
Please only use one side of the paper; if your lab report is long enough to make you want to double-side it, then it's probably too long.

Heading

Just like it says in the manual, give the name of the experiment, the date (either date done or date due is fine by me, but please no random dates like the Battle of Hastings), your group's names with yours first and somehow set off so I know which partner's report this is, and your section (to make life easier for me organizationally; Lord knows I need it).
It would also be helpful to put my name on there (given of course that you're in one of my lab sections), so in case there's a mix-up with which locker to put it in the other TA will know who to get the report to.
No, you don't need to have Heading: and a little indented section with all this info; just set it out in some sort of appropriate heading for the report. The other sections you should label somehow, though.

Abstract

This should be short (only a couple of sentences), and should be the basic aim of the experiment in your own words, along with a brief statement of your principal results.
Don't waste more than one or two words on the significance of your results (say, how close they came to "accepted"), since that's for the Conclusion section.

Theory

Read the guidelines in the lab manual.
If I start reading something that's verbatim from the lab manual or from things on these web pages, I'll not only stop reading but get angry. The point is not for you to instruct me on what the lab is about; hopefully, I have a handle on that. The point is for you to give a brief statement of what this lab is about, as in: why does this experiment give an important or relevant or useful result? I want to see that you understand what's going on.
If this section is your own work but takes longer for me to read than, say, one of the UHS pamphlets about the flu or substance abuse, then I'll still read it but I'll probably get somewhat angry. You don't need to repeat standard derivations here, just state briefly the theory that's relevant.
If you have some neat insights on the theoretical background of these experiments I'll be more than happy to chat over them with you, just not on the lab report.

Experiment

Again, look at the lab manual.
Again, keep this section really short and to the point.
You can either describe your equipment in words or use a diagram (which usually makes things at least a little clearer). If you use diagrams, keep them simple. This doesn't have to be an artistic masterpiece (none of my drawings are, even if I try).
When I was in high school chemistry, our chem teacher made us write up the "procedure" section of our lab reports before the labs, then we couldn't use the lab manual but had to only refer to our written-up procedures. In addition, halfway through the first semester he forced us to use only diagrams and drawings, no words, in that "procedure" section. Why am I telling you this chilling story? Did I like it and so I'm going to adopt that approach? No! It was awful. However, seen in hindsight, we really had to know what it was we were going to be doing when we stepped into the lab. So, as a piece of advice, it might be a good idea to try to write out the procedures in your own words, even just roughly, before you do the lab. That way, you can try to get a start on knowing what to do, and you'll realize what areas of the lab manual are confusing you most so you can ask me or the TI at the beginning of the lab!

Data Analysis

This is the most important part. Spend the most effort (and time) on this part.
As it says in the lab manual, copy over any tables or other data from the data sheets in some neat form. Please don't refer me constantly back to the data sheets for numbers.
Calculate uncertainties for the major data you report. As the lab manual instructions state, show one example calculation (you can do the rest in your head or with a calculator or computer) for each type.
Please make sure the math is correct. Spelling doesn't matter that much to me -- but check over your arithmetic to make sure it's right!
If you include graphs, label the axes!
In graphs or tables, or anywhere, make sure you give the units! Saying that something has the length of 10 doesn't convey any information at all. Saying it's 10 plus-or-minus 2 at least gives some idea of relative uncertainty, but still doesn't say anything about size. Saying 10cm plus-or-minus 2cm is reporting on a length (or width, or whatever). Unless a number is really dimensionless, like the argument of a sin() function, then it isn't complete unless you say what the units are.
Note that I'm not just being arbitrary here. Keeping track of the units can help you spot and prevent most of the silly errors that we're all susceptible to.

Conclusion

Express the relevance of your results, as well as their precision and any inconsistencies or error from "accepted" results; be quantitative, but also give some indication of how well things fitted or worked.
Make sure you mention the principal sources of error and how they affected the results. This is especially important if your answers were really aberrant, but it's important to consider sources of error anyway. I mean, if I do an experiment and find that pi is 3.14159266 that's pretty darn close, but if the standard deviation was 2.02 then I really can't say that I know my result was that close, but I just basically got lucky this time and got an answer very close to accepted.
You can either include the answers to any Questions in the lab manual as part of the conclusion, or (my preference) make them their own section if it would make for a disjointed or unweildy long conclusion.

Remarks

This is for comments to me. Basically whatever you want to say.
I'd appreciate it if you comment on the experiment, maybe go into a little bit more detail about why you had some specific huge source of error, or how the lab could be made easier or more interesting.
Also, comments about me and the TI(s), or about whatever. If it's not lab related, who cares? Just don't make it an epistle...

Data Sheets

Your data sheets (appropriately signed-off, as I talked about above).

Grading

Grade allocation

Prelab: 2 points.
Abstract, Theory, Experiment: 1 point each.
Data Analysis: 4 points.
Conclusion and any lab-result-related Remarks: 1 point.

Late Labs

The standard penalty for turning in labs late (without a legitimate, acceptable reason) is 1 point per week or part thereof. I've softened that a little: If you turn it in one day late, it's half a point off; 2-7 days late is 1 point off; and so on. You have a whole week to find a couple of hours (see below) to do the lab report; this is mainly an incentive to help encourage you to not put it off until day 6 and then realize you're out of time.

The guideline is that you should spend about 2.5 hours doing the lab report writeup. If you get a good report done quicker than that, then that's great; but if you're labouring for much longer than that, then you're either doing too much work or having some trouble that you should talk to me or a TI about.

Pet Peeves

Everybody has things that they just can't stand, and so do I. Here are a couple of things that while they're not policy, are very important to me, and which will therefore make a difference in my assessment of your work:

Keep track of your uncertainties (estimated error), and compare that to your actual difference from whatever the accepted values might be. There's no way to know whether being 10% low is good or not, unless you know the precision of your measurements and calculations.
Limit your reported results to the proper (or at least a reasonable) number of digits. Nobody makes measurements with a ruler to 8 significant figures, so don't report it that way!
Don't erase on your data sheets.
This I can't emphasize strongly enough. You can use pen or pencil as you desire, but do not erase on the data sheets. It's a bad habit to get into for several reasons. If you make a mistake in writing something down, and we all do at some point, just cross it out by putting a line through it. I don't care so much about your raw data sheets being pretty; that's for the copied-over data that you report in the Data Analysis section. What I do care about is their being complete, and not having lots of erasures everywhere.
On the other hand, graphs with various things crossed out are worse than nothing. So if you do your graphs by hand, I'd advise you to use pencil or something, so that you can erase if you make a mistake.
Any uncertainties that you use or express in your Data Analysis section must come from something that's on your data sheets. If you just wrote distances down on the data sheet with no plus-or-minus uncertanties, I'd better not see them magically appear when you start doing your analysis. This is making up data, and is not the sort of thing I want to encourage. So, you have two ways to handle this:
1. The best way: take down uncertainty values for every type of measurement you do in the lab, right on the data sheet.
2. If, after you do the lab, you read the "analysis" part of the lab manual (which you should have done before coming to lab, by the way...) and realise you need a figure which you just don't have, be honest about it and do your best to express things and generate results and conclusions without having that figure. If it's some universal constant or something then come ask me and I will probably give you a book value to use (but note in the report where it came from); but if it's an uncertainty, then don't make one up. Do your best without and explain in Conclusion or Remarks why it's not reported.

Again, I'm sorry if all this comes off as negative or Draconian, but I just think that it's better to have things set out explicitly so we're all on the same waelength, and there should hopefully be less disagreement. Most of the things above are flexible, except of course for grading and makeup policies. I hope all this writing was unnecessary since things will go well!