Writing a Lab Report: Crafting Clear and Supported Hypotheses

If you have written your Title, you have your IV and DV variables. Now all you need to do is say that as the IV goes up or down, what will happen to the DV. Remember, the IV is what you change, the DV is what you measure. Of course, in science we want to sound a lot more sciency than “goes up” or “goes down”, so we use the words increase and decrease.

Thinking about what you have read about the experiment, seen before, how your teacher introduced the experiment, and looking at your variables table, what do you think will happen as you increase the IV? 

Another piece of great news is, it doesn’t matter if you are right or wrong here. If you say the DV will also increase, and it goes down it doesn’t matter. If you say as the IV increases the DV will decrease, and when you start getting results the measurements actually get bigger, it’s fine—as long as you explain why you thought that might happen, and why what actually happened, happened :)

You can use the following structure in every lab report, just change the IV, DP, and choose either increase or decrease:

As the IV increases/decreases, the DV will increase/decrease, I think this because…..

So, it’s not the What? that gives you the marks, it’s the Why? that shows the person reading/assessing your lab report you know what you’re doing

If you have finished compiling, perhaps even writing, your Background Information section, then congratulations! you already have enough to finish this section. If you realise now that you don’t have enough to finish the Hypothesis Why? Section, then that’s also good as it’s shown you that the Background Information was incomplete and you could have dropped some marks, even though you had spent time researching the experiment. The more often you do this, the easier it becomes, and as you do your research you will be thinking ahead and only writing about the relevant scientific information for your project/lab report. 

If the Background Information has all the details in it, why do you have to write it again? 

If I have written it already, can I just copy and paste those sentences here?

These are common questions, and common mistakes that your teacher will have seen again and again, but lab reports are there to help other researchers, all sections should make as much sense as possible on their own, without it being a hunting exercise for the reader to find the relevant information elsewhere, so don’t write “see above” or similar, and don’t copy and paste. 

A short summary of the science in the Background Information is needed here, just enough to show you can link all the relevant bits together. As you offer detail in the Background Information, the relevant bits for the hypothesis might be broken up by further details not needed here. For example, you wrote four paragraphs for your Background Information, one sentence of each paragraph is needed to outline your hypothesis, so you pull the main point out of each one and say, in order, how they affect each other.

Let’s say the experiment is about the amount of sunlight on the height of pea plants. You might have written lots of great stuff about photosynthesis, glucose, water, how plants use glucose, time of year, etc. in the Background Information, but not all of it is needed here. A good writer can summarise, and show the reader how their ideas flow. Using the above sentence structure:

As the amount of sunlight increases, the height of the pea plants will also increase, I think this because there will be more light available for photosynthesis, which will produce more glucose. Glucose units are joined together to make cellulose, which is used to make the plant-cell walls. The more cells a plant can make, and the more energy (glucose) it has, the taller it can grow.

The above information would not have been enough for the Background Information, but the two sentence summary is sufficient here. Can you notice another difference here? There are no references, you have done that bit already. If the reader really wants to know more details (about the science or where you found it), they will go back to the Background Information. The idea here is just to summarise the science from your research enough, that it supports your hypothesis.

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