The reports must be typed using 10 or 12 point font size and either Arial or Helvetica font.  The report must be double spaced with proper use of subscripts and superscripts.  Correct chemical formulae are important in the chemical literature.  Use the appropriate symbols (ie, p for pi, s for sigma, D for delta, etc.) when necessary.

All reports should include the following sections:

Title - use the title of the experiment without the experiment number.

Author and affiliation - your name, followed by the course name, Department of Chemistry and Physics, Arkansas State Unviersity.

Introduction - briefly describe why you are doing what you are doing, with a historical perspective, if appropriate.  This may include a brief literature review in some cases.

Experimental section - describe the actual work done in the past tense.  Include methods and materials.  Any instruments should list their make and model and also include a serial number.   It also a good practice to record the manufacturer and lot number for chemicals.  This provides the opportunity to identify which bottle of compound X was actually used.   In some cases, a diagram of the experimental set-up is useful.

Results - describe the results from the described experiments in paragraph form and include 1) data in tables (where appropriate), and the use of figures/ spectra.

Discussion - discuss the significance of the results.

Conclusion - summarize the significant findings.

References - list references for any sources, including web sources.  This should be in footnote form.

As students of inorganic chemistry, we will be using the guidelines for authors for the journal 'Inorganic Chemistry'.  Research articles and lab reports should not include the word ' I '.  All information should be in paragraph form.   Figures and tables should be numbered and included in the text in numerical order.  Figures and tables should be referenced in the text (ie, see fig. 2). You may want to find an article from 'Inorganic Chemistry' to use a a guide.

CHEM4204 Experiment list

Revised 1/11/11