PHY4802L - LABORATORY ELECTRONICS - Fall 2017
How to Keep a Notebook
As discussed briefly below, a professional
scientific
notebook serves several purposes. We want to set you off on the right
foot so
we will follow some of the relevant practices but we will not be as
rigid with
how you keep your lab notebooks as will be the case in Lab II
(PHY4803L). Your
laboratory notebook is principally a (critical) memory aid for you.
You might, for example, be doing an experiment
that requires
recording a current (to several decimal places) as you adjust a voltage
over
some set range of values. You won’t be able to remember all the
numbers so you
will need to set up a table in your notebook in which the first column
is the
voltages you apply, and the second column is the corresponding currents
you
measure and record. Later on the experiment calls for a modification to
the
circuit and a repeat of these measurements, which you do in a second
table. But
dang…, only after that is done do you realize that your first
circuit was
flawed in some way, so you repeat the first set of measurements in the
corrected circuit.
Two weeks later you have to write up these results
in a
report and now, long after you’ve forgotten the details of what
precisely you
did, you flip back through your notebook to be confronted by three
tables, but
without any other information! Which table belongs to which version of
the
circuit? Which one was wrong and had to be repeated? You see the point.
What
you should have done is made a sketch of each circuit to associate with
each
table and then made a notation that the first circuit and its
associated table
was wrong.
For those of you with OCD (to which many in our
line of work
are prone), you will be tempted to write your notebooks in pencil or
use a
loose leaf folder so you can erase or tear out the offending table.
Don’t do
this! You should use a notebook with bound, numbered pages, you should
write in
pen, with corrections clearly indicated, but with the original still
legible,
and your first entry on any day should be dated. There are several
reasons to
get used to this. First and foremost, a popular meme today is
‘pics or it
didn’t happen’, similarly in professional work, it’s
‘notes or it didn’t
happen’. Just as a blurry or poorly framed picture tells you
little about what
went on, your notes need to be neat enough to let you reconstruct the
events
and give you confidence in the data (often in the face of contradictory
or
confounding results). Beyond that, your properly kept notebook provides
documentation that this is work that you
did and when you did it. This
from the perspective of plagiarism or priority.
As life would have it, you are likely at some
point in your
career to have a co-worker try to claim credit for your work. A
properly kept
notebook will provide your first line of defense that it was, in fact,
your
work. Priority relates to any potentially valuable intellectual
property (think
patents) that comes from your work and your ability to claim being the
first to
think of and recognize its significance in a way that makes it
valuable.
Realize that your notebook may become a legal document in a dispute.
General tips for a properly kept research notebook:
·
Use a notebook having bound numbered
pages (quad
ruled preferred).
·
Identify the notebook as yours with
your name
and contact info (to return it, if lost).
·
Date the start of work on any new
day.
·
Date and start any new work on a new
page.
·
Include descriptive text about what
you did and
its immediate motivation.
·
Label tables and graph axes.
·
Don’t erase or tear out pages.
Strike out an
incorrect result with a single line leaving it legible.
·
Printed or photocopied sections can
be taped in.
Date and initial across the edge of the tape.