Date
14 January 2016
From
Simon Peeters
Department of Physics and Astronomy
T +44 (0) 1273 678712
To
All MPhys (Advanced) Lab Students
Memorandum
cc
MPhys Lab Long Reports - Notes for Authors
This is to remind you that a Long Lab (Project Level) Report, is to be written on any of the
experiments that you have done or are doing. This report will be double marked in the
same way as a Final Year Project Report and the following gives you information on when
and where to submit this report and some guidance on how to prepare it.
1. Submission. The deadline for submission of the report – IN PDF FORMAT ON STUDY
DIRECT, AND TWO HARD COPIES - to the School Office, Pev 2, 3A20 :
ALL MPhys Lab: by 16:00 on Thursday, 10 March 2016.
Failure of Word Processor package or disc or printer is not an acceptable reason for late
submission. A pdf copy of the report should be submitted at the same time, on Study
Direct.
2. Long Lab Reports are not returned to you. If you wish to have a copy for yourself, please
make this before the deadline.
3. Length. This depends somewhat on the experiment, but 3,000 - 8,000 words will suffice
in most cases.
4. You can assume that your reader has the same general background knowledge of
physics (but not necessarily of astronomy) as one of your fellow-students who is doing a
different experiment. You then need to put in enough specific background information in
your Introduction to enable such a student to understand what your experiment is about.
3. Layout. This should contain the following elements:
(a) Abstract
(b) Preface
(c) Table of Contents (with page numbers)
(c) Main Text
(d) Acknowledgements
(e) Appendices
(f) References and Bibliography.
Preface: The purpose of this is for you to state explicitly the extent to which your
dissertation relies on the work of others, and highlight the portion that you claim to be
your own original work. For example: you might say: “The results of section 3 rely upon a
information provided by the supervisors. The analysis of the data is entirely my own
work. I carried out the analytical calculation of chapter 4 in conjunction with my lab
partner…” and so on. Without this statement, it will be assumed that no work is original
and that your report is a review article. If you merely claim that the report is all your own
work, you should be aware that any evidence to the contrary may leave you susceptible
to charges of plagiarism. (Similar rules apply to the final year report.)
Diagrams and short tables should be included in the text, but extensive tabular matter
should be placed in appendices, as should detailed calculations not required for the
immediate understanding of the text.
References and Bibliography: Wherever possible, references should be specific and to
the primary published source material, i.e. to a journal article or conference proceedings
or to a book, and not to a web page containing reference to the primary source. (The
reasons for this should be obvious – web pages often have a limited lifetime. In addition,
web material is not subject to any quality control in the form of peer review.)
Reference Style: This should follow either the "Harvard" style or be numbered strictly in
the order in which they appear in the text. In the former, reference is made in the text by
giving the name of the author and the year of publication in parentheses e.g. "...the large
polarization (Moffat 1971a) is accounted for...." or "....Jones (1990) found that....". In the
case of more than two authors, use the form "....Budd et al (1971)....." At the end of the
text, the references should be listed in alphabetical order of the first author (and
chronological order for several papers by one author). All authors of a paper should be
given in this listing. The style should be:
Budd W F, Jones M and Radol C, 1971 Rep Prog Phys, 31 1-70.
Moffat, P.H., 1971a Mon Not R Astr Soc, 153 401-418.
If you use reference numbers, this should appear in the text either as a superscript, Budd
et al27, or in square brackets, Moffat [32]. Some word-processing or editing packages
(e.g. Word and Latex) will take care of the numbering for you. Without such a tool,
renumbering the references each time you modify the text becomes difficult and it is
hence often easier to use the Harvard style.
Books read as general background and not specifically referred to in the text should be
listed in a General Bibliography, in alphabetical order of authors.
NOTE: You should consult the information given on Study Direct.
4. Main Text The order and titles of the sections in this will, in most cases, follow broadly
the typical pattern of a substantial paper in a journal or of a DPhil thesis.
5. Format. The paper should be A4 (297 mm x 210 mm) and the text should be typeset.
Plain paper should be used and the spacing can be single. The report can be printed
double sided.
6. Binding
The title of the Project, the candidate number, the name of the experiment
supervisor and the date should be typed on the front cover. Your name should not
appear in any form in the dissertation.
7. Weighting. You will recall that the mark for this report makes up 30% of the assessment
for this two term (30 credits) course. It is extremely unwise, therefore, to fail to submit a
Long Lab Report.
8. http://www.sussex.ac.uk/mps/internal/departments/physicsandastronomy/ug/studyingphy
sics. The marking guidelines can be found in the Guide to Study. Your attention is also
drawn to Section 2.9 of the Examination and Assessment Regulations Handbook
2014/15 and particularly to the paragraph on plagiarism. If you directly quote the writings
of other people in your dissertation, or use figures and/or tables from published sources,
you must acknowledge this specifically in the text.