Avoid lab jargon and give a brief explanation of terms that may not be familiar to readers who are not in your field  Ask a friend to read your paper and point out what may be hard to follow.

COMPONENTS OF A TECHNICAL PAPER

I.  COVER PAGE

    a. Title

    b. Student Name

    c. College or University

    d. Department or School

    e. Abstract (about 100 words)

The abstract summarizes your paper for the reader.  It should tell what you did and why , and what results you obtained.  usually, people read abstracts to decide if they want to read the whole article, so it is very important that the abstract is a good summary of what is in the paper.  You should write the abstract only after you have written the rest of the paper.

II.  INTRODUCTION

This section discusses the background of the subject matter you are writing about.  what are the scientific principles underlying this work?  What has already been done by other in this field?  What work has led you to do this particular study?  Include references to the

III.  MATERIALS AND METHODS (OR PROCEDURES)

In this section you should give enough information on how you conducted your work so that someone in your field could repeat what you have done.  If you used standard published procedures for certain parts of you work, you can simply state that fact and cite a reference that gives a full description of the procedure.  If you developed you own technique, or made any modifications in someone else's technique, then you should briefly yet completely describe it.  This section should not include results of experiments, but simply the description of how experiments were carried out.  Don't forget to include statements about how many times experiments were repeated, and what statistical analyses, if and, were done. 

IV.  RESULTS

This section summarizes what happened in your experiments.  If you use a separate discussion section (not all papers do this; some have a combined results/discussion) then you should not try to explain why you obtained these results or what experiments you should do next.  However, keep in mind that the reader may be unfamiliar with the area you are working in, and it helps if you can use brief connecting statements between different topics or experiments to explain why you did this experiment or what you were trying to find out.  The results section will probably include tables, graphs, or other figures that summarize that data that you obtained and help the reader understand your results.  Such figures and tables should be clearly labeled with brief yet complete descriptions of what they contain in their titles or captions.  A rule of thumb to follow is that figures and tables should be able to stand alone; a reader should not have to refer to the text to understand what is being presented.  Another important rule is that the data presented in figures or tables should not be repeated in the text.  You should refer to the appropriate figure or table in the text as you are describing your work, but don't make the reader read the same data twice.  The sequence of results presented should tell a logical story; you may not present your results in the same order in which you conducted your experiments.

VI.  DISCUSSION OF RESULTS

In this section you discuss the meaning of your results.  Do they make sense physically?  Are they what you expected, or do they go against what you thought would happen?  Why?  How does you work relate to other published work?  Does it agree or disagree with what others have found?  Does it complete a project that someone else has started?  What are the implications of you results?  This section, like the Introduction, may include citations to previously published work.  It is probably the most important section of the paper, because here you demonstrate how well you understand what you have done.  It is also acceptable to point out possible problems with you work.  Did you encounter and problems with procedures?  Were you results repeated?  Can you do any statistical analyses?

VI.  RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE WORK

This may be included as a last paragraph in the discussion section, or may be set apart as a separate section.  Here you should briefly describe what is the next logical step to take, given what you have learned from the analysis of your results.  What do you hope to learn from future experiments?

VII.  REFERENCES

Your paper should include a minimum of three (3) references, but generally will include more that that.  Most of your references probably will be to original papers published in journals, but you may also cite textbooks for basic principles or even for specific methods.  Remember that any idea that is not you own must be credited!  Each reference must contain enough information so that it can be found again.  Follow a consistent format in presenting the required information.  References to journal articles typically include names of authors, date (year) of publication, title of article, journal title, volume number (and sometimes issue number), and pages where the article is located.  References to books typically include author (or editor) of book, year of publication, book title, publisher (including principal city for publisher's offices), and sometimes specific pages where cited information is to be found.

VIII.  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is a good place to acknowledge and thank your employer, instructor, research advisor, or TA.  You should also acknowledge and funding agency that may have paid for your research materials or hourly salary (e.g. NSF, DOE).  Do not thank your dog, significant other, etc.  Treat this paper as if it well be published in a journal and read by a potential employer.

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