Experimental Protocols and Techniques Life Sciences Research Paper

3. Experimental Protocols and Techniques Due: Friday of Week 5 at 5:30 PM CDT (Oct. 30) Class Lectures: Ch. 9. The Gaseous State (Week 4) THE CHEMISTRY (with the lectures) Read the paper entitled “UV Dosage Levels in Summer: Increased Risk of Ozone Loss from Convectively Injected Water Vapor,” located at https://science.sciencemag.org/content/337/6096/835/tab-pdf, and think critically about the chemistry applied in the experiment. Specifically, you should write about the following: 1. Review ideal gas laws. Identify applications of the ideal gas law in the project paper and provide a short comment. Try to identify examples where the authors exploit an ideal from the ideal gas law but do not explicitly invoke it. 2. Use your own words to explain how the concepts involved with the ideal gas law are used or are necessary to enable the experiments or chemical understanding in the paper. PROTOCOLS AND TECHNIQUES The experimental (methods) section is an extremely important part of a good science paper, as this is the place to communicate with readers on how to reproduce the experimental work. To perform experiments safely and productively, you need both well-documented experiment protocols and good lab techniques. A protocol should allow you to work systematically during an experiment, to minimize potential mistakes. For this week’s lab report, review the project paper, and identify the protocols and techniques used in the experiment. You may create a flow chart for the protocol and present a list of instructions (including equipment) used for the experiment. This may include but is not limited to, the experimental setup, experiment length, preparation, working conditions, data collection, and analysis. All important parts of the experimental procedure must be included. That being said, many wellknown techniques and manipulations are implied and so can be referenced without pedantic details. (You can recognize well-known techniques even if they aren’t well known to you. Authors will often cite other groups regarding such techniques, but when they cite their own papers, it may be somewhat specialized. Also, techniques mentioned with minimal explanation are likely well-known techniques, but a quick literature search on google scholar can probably help you to identify them and also to properly cite them.) EXPERIMENTAL FINDINGS After following the experimental protocols and applying good lab techniques, presumably, you will have obtained satisfactory experimental data. It is now time to perform analysis that will, hopefully, yield a clear and novel conclusion. Explain in your own words the analysis strategy and choices/compromises made by Anderson and coworkers. TABLES AND FIGURES Data tables and figures may be used to present the experimental results. Figures are graphical depictions that can tell a story at a glance and should be simple and without extraneous text. Every figure must be numbered and include a caption that describes its contents. Captions are normally phrases and contain a period in the end. More information on creating good figures can be found in The ACS Style Guide. Examine the figures from the current project paper, provide comments, and conclusion(s) from these presentations. Specifically, look for a detail not explained in the paper and hypothesize what might be causing it. For your report, please include one annotated figure and a caption of your own creating explaining the figure/annotation. You may assume that the reader is familiar with the Anderson paper. Any figures that you include in your lab report should either be original (that is, made by you) or adapted from a cited source and annotated by you. Please do not simply include a figure from a paper without your somehow adding something meaningful to it. Lab Report this week: Your report should include all three components discussed above, i.e., the chemistry discussion related to the class lectures, experimental protocols and techniques, and the figure analysis and experimental findings. Once you have gathered all the data with your writing, submit your report to the Canvas assignment page. Your report will be about four pages long including one page explicating applications of the ideal gas law, one page containing your flow chart and protocol (it’s ok for this to be longer than 1 page if that helps keep the charge legible for the TAs), one page on the data analysis and strategy, and one page containing an annotated figure and caption. GRADING Section Possible Points Points Earned Ideal Gas law examples and discussion 30 Protocols and techniques 20 Experimental analysis strategy discussion 20 Figure 20 Writing style and professional presentation 10 TOTAL 100