Topic: Hydration of an Alkene:
Ammoniaboration/Oxidation of 1-Octene
1. Title Page: Include the title of the experiment (not necessarily the title as written in the laboratory manual), author’s name, name of lab partner (if applicable), class and section for which report was written, and date of submission.
2. Introduction: PRESENT TENSE. A stand-alone section that includes an objective, a purpose, and the background scientific context that supports and leads to your ultimate hypothesis of the experimental outcome.
Objective: What did you set out to accomplish? This may include a description of the overall experimental transformation, a balanced equation, proposed electron-pushing arrow mechanisms, and/or flow charts of procedures (if pertinent to the objective).
Purpose: Why are you doing this experiment? This is vastly different from the objective (see above) and can be somewhat subjective. A purpose could be:
(a) To evaluate the mechanism and resultant product stereochemistry, regiochemistry, and/or overall efficacy of a particular reaction, or to compare these for of a particular class of reactions.
(b) To evaluate any new laboratory techniques. Include a complete description of the theory behind every new laboratory and/or analytical technique employed.
(c) To underscore the importance of the experimental transformation to the general or scientific public. To illustrate this, you could specifically describe any background information that illustrates the industrial, biological, medicinal, or other significance of the objectives listed above.
Hypothesis: What do you predict to be the key result(s) of the experiment? A sound hypothesis should address both the objective and the purpose, and is clearly rationalized using scientific concepts, theories, and/or proposed mechanisms.
Note that the objectives, purposes, and hypotheses should not be written separately or stated directly as “the purpose of the experiment was to…” Alternatively, they should be laced together in well-organized and well-written sentences that flow between paragraphs. Many times, the hypothesis is inferred in the objective, and does not need to be stated explicitly as “the hypothesis of the experiment is…”
3. Experimental: PAST TENSE. A clearly written experimental procedure aimed specifically at a technical audience, following either J. Org. Chem. or Tetrahedron format.
4. Results: Organized into tables of data characterizing your product(s), as well as any observations of what took place. Use the table templates in this lab manual. The characterization of each product may include several of the following:
Any calculations specifically requested in the rubric (percent yield, percent purity, reagent stoichiometries ,etc…) must be clearly shown at the end of this section. Use Microsoft Equation to make the calculations easy to follow and look presentable.
5. Discussion: PAST AND PRESENT TENSES. An interpretation of what all of the results mean. This should reflect the objectives.
(a) Restate the key results. Do the results confirm or refute the overall objective/task/hypothesis of the experiment?
(b) How does each piece of chromatographic and spectroscopic data support or not support your statement above? Were all characterization techniques equally helpful in coming to a conclusion? Be discerning with your data. Discuss only the evidence that truly supports your conclusion. Not all data will be significant.
(c) Was the reaction and/or laboratory technique an effective method to achieve the objective/task? Provide a critical evaluation based on your own experimental results. Address percent yield, product identity, product purity, and environmental factors (waste and/or toxicity of reagents, solvents, and byproducts) in your analysis. If the experiment was unsuccessful, or if there was a low yield, what factors could have contributed to its failure? Provide a critical, thoughtful, rational analysis of all details that may have hampered the results of the reaction.
Note that the Discussion section should not be written merely as points in response to the questions above. Alternatively, all of the information should be laced together in well-organized and well-written sentences that flow between paragraphs. Often times there are no separate Results & Discussion sections, but instead they are combined into one section, and presented in a way that cogently supports your argument. The post-laboratory reflections are designed to prompt you to consider the information truly crucial to your discussion.
6. References: For example, your lab manual, lab textbook, lecture textbook, journal articles, websites or any other references. Use a standard American Chemical Society (ACS) format from the ACS Style Guide.
7. Abstract: PAST TENSE. A concise summary of what was accomplished. It should be written so that the reader does not have to read the body of the paper to decipher what took place. The standard length is 100 to 250 words. While this may be the shortest section of the laboratory report, it is often considered the most important. It reflects the experimenter’s capacity to correctly interpret and decipher evidence from data, his/her understanding of an experimental strategy versus procedure, and most importantly his/her ability to concisely and accurately communicate these things to a technical audience. An abstract should be able to answer the following questions:
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