Upon reflection,

 

This lab report assignment was quite useful to me as one who is going back to school and hoping to study engineering. This kind of work is not something that I have done in a long time, but I will be expected to know how to do it well enough that I can complete a report on my own. The report that I have done is basic but includes all of the parts of a proper report with enough information for the experiment to be repeated. Because the materials and procedures for a pinewood derby car race are very time consuming and resource heavy to recreate, I simulated the experiment in theory. I did not actually conduct it. This means that the data that I ‘collected’ is completely fabricated and in this case tailored to support my hypothesis. This clearly saved a lot of time on the whole process leaving just the actual report to put effort into. The report itself was time consuming mostly because of the graphic media and tables that I included. I am completely unfamiliar with graphic design, so making the design blueprints was a separate learning process with a new program (TDI Technical Drawing and Illustration) but they are necessary to making a clear report in this case. The learning process was essentially trial and error. I first made the blueprints by hand (actually the entire report, to simulate doing the actual experiment) and proceeded to learn a way to make the same thing digitally. I also refamiliarized myself with spread sheet making and using formulas. The actual text of my report is simple, as the experiment itself is basic and the supplies are all standardized. The report could include more details about the materials and procedure, however these details are not necessary to recreate the experiment’s function, so they were not added in plethora. I wanted to make sure that I kept the report clear and did not add confusion. I feel like the learning that I did was not in the amount of useless details I could invent, but rather that I refamiliarized myself with thinking through a process in a scientific manner. I believe that the skills I used/practiced are transmutable to any size project, and that the only difference would be the technicality of the description of the pieces of the experiment.

Having said all of this, I would assign myself a B – for this assignment as it shows understanding of the basics of the project and how to apply them, however the project itself and the report could include more details and high level calculations and data points. Also, the things in the project that use standard of ‘official’ measurement could be described in detail, instead of assuming the person reading will find the same/correct standards. Another draft will likely be done, adding new information and a more in depth analysis of why the experiment resulted in the data that it did.