I developed the following documents to help my introductory physics students write better lab reports. Feel free to use them under following license:

Lab Report Guidelines

Lab reports will comprise most of your grade in the lab component of Physics 123. This is because writing lab reports will hone your ability to make a convincing, quantitative argument via the scientific method. This will be quite useful throughout your career, because convincing people to adopt your approach is much easier if you have sound numerical support.

It will take practice and time to do well on lab reports. To help you get up to speed faster, I have compiled several documents which should assist you. I recommend that you read them before you write your report for Lab #1.

The template gives you an idea of the sections and content that should appear in your lab report.

This is the rubric I will use to grade your lab. It will give you a good idea of how many points you'll earn for each section. There are also a number of important instructions.

The "Quick Reference" is a good introduction to the tools and concepts that go into a good lab report. I highly recommend reading the whole thing before writing your first lab report.

My example lab report is based upon my measurements for the third objective for Lab 2. I have written it to be over the top complete, so treat it as the example of an ideal lab report.