Messing Up Labs?

Student Lounge College Life
1

<p>There is a curse on me when I do course-related labwork. Every time I try to do a lab I always closely follow the directions but my results are never what they should be and I'm getting sick of it. I try asking the T.A. what I'm doing wrong but he/she almost always wonders too what I'm doing wrong and tells me to discuss it on the lab report. I'm also getting really frustrated that I follow the procedures perfectly and preread over and over again the procedures/lab but something always goes wrong, and then I look at my neighbors who have no idea what to do but somehow manage to get almost perfect results. If I'm heating up something, the thermometer always has to decrease. If I am expecting a purple solution, I always get blue. If I expect a solution to crystallize, it will vaporize. If I expect square waves, I always get sine waves.</p>

<p>I just feel like the labs are such a waste if my results actually contradict the theory taught in class. What should I do to get better results? The funny thing is that I'm actually in a research lab.</p>

2

<p>If you have a good understanding on the theory, the results do not really matter. You can play around with results by using your intuition on what it is going to be. Why not use your neighbor’s data? Pretty sure the data can be shared because the data is only used for calculations and to write the report. </p>

<p>Sometimes it is not you that is getting the data wrong. The equipment may not be calibrated, or not functional. You need to compare your first trial results with your neighbor before starting trials 2 and 3. Hope this helps because I had your problem during my first year of college. </p>