Spice Lab Report Overview

Your lab report should consist of the following:

Introduction

• Relevant background information
• Whatever material is necessary to introduce the topic to an unfamiliar reader 
• Whatever information/research led you from your investigative question to your hypothesis 
• The relevance of your topic 
• Vegetarian recipes tend to contain fewer spices than those that contain meat. Why might that be? Think about what you learned this week as well as the last few weeks (i.e. where does our meat come from?) 
• Your investigative question
• Your hypothesis with a rationale

Methods - The following should be discussed using only the past tense and in the 3rd person only

• IV
• DV
• Controlled variables
• Control group
• Experimental group
• Observation/data table
• Summary of procedure

Results

• Data table 
• A graph that shows how the number of colonies or boxes covered by bacteria was affected by the various herbs/spices.

Discussion

• Make inferences based on your observations. 
• Be sure to refer to your data/observations specifically to support your inferences. 
• Be sure that you answer the experimental question that you were investigating. Make sure that your answer to your question is supported clearly by data/observations. 

• Using the data you collected, make a claim about your hypothesis and the data. Was the hypothesis supported or not supported by the results of your experiment? 
• Be sure to refer to your data/observations specifically when evaluating your hypothesis.


• Draw a conclusion and answer your big investigative question. 
• It’s 12,000 B.C. There is no such thing as refrigeration and you just caught a tasty boar (nice job). Which spice would you use to flavor/preserve the boar meat so that it tastes delicious without being harmful? Explain.
• Discuss all sources of error, which may have impacted the results. 
• Discuss each error and the specific impact it may have had on the data and/or how you interpreted it. 
• Evaluate your experimental setup – Do you think that the experiment worked well? Why? What changes would you make? Why would you make them? 
• Based on any and all errors – how reliable are the results and your evaluation of your hypothesis? Do you trust your data? Why or why not?