Peter Beltramo- beltramo@udel.edu

Furst Lab Group:Lab Best Practices and Procedures

Peter BeltramoUpdated: 08/01/12

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• Starting in the lab• Maintaining a lab notebook• Lab safety

Outline

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• Complete safety training– Chemical hygiene (mandatory)– Right-to-know (mandatory)– Laser (if necessary)

• Pick up a lab notebook (shelf in 017)– Daily account of lab activities

• Buy a three-ring binder– Documentation of compiled research

updates and summaries

Starting in the lab

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• Safety Chief- Kathy• http://www.udel.edu/OHS/

– Scheduling safety training– MSDS sheets

• Chemical inventory– Maintained online (http://ehs.facil.udel.edu:1568/ see

wiki for log-in info)– Update when receiving new material– Label containers clearly, in english (NO abbrevs or

chemical formulas)– Chemical waste bags MUST have a tag on it listing

the contents

Laboratory Safety

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• No matter how awesome your experiment is, you will not remember the complete details– It will be your primary source of information when

compiling papers, your thesis, or a patent

• Your notebook is a legal document in case of disputes

• Your notebook is the property of the lab and will be used by future students who carry on your research!

• Writing in your notebook also helps plan and think through experimental procedures!

Why is a lab notebook necessary?

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• “Reflect its own integrity• Corroborate information independent

of the person doing the research”

*From document originally prepared by SWIFFT at Cornell

Goals of a Lab Notebook

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• Fill in your contact information and be sure to number your lab notebooks sequentially

• Date each entry– Keep in chronological order

• Record each entry in legible, permanent ink immediately

• Sign each page• NEVER- leave blank space

– Instead: draw lines and sign over any blank area

• NEVER- erase/white-out/remove/tear out/rip pages or any content in your lab notebook– Instead: Strikeout mistakes with a single line

How to properly keep a lab notebook

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• Date every entry• Enough account of experiment that a fellow

scientist “skilled in the art” can follow and reproduce– Keep in mind that what you might think is a “trivial”

detail at the time might not be obvious to others– Can cross reference clearly to the page/notebook

where a procedure is located

• Include catalogue/lot/batch numbers for every chemical used

• Start and end times (e.g. 2pm – 4pm) rather than “for 2 hours”

• Can reference older page numbers

Entries- level of detail

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• The significance and motivation for your experiment• The location of electronic files (especially useful for

particle tracking info)• Related calculations (including even unit conversions)• The weather (especially if it’s unusually hot/cold or

humid in the lab, these things matter)• Personal comments

– If you are angry/having a bad day, it might effect your lab skills and is worth noting (and more positively if you’re happy you can write that too…)

• “SUCCESS”• “FAIL”• Other initial interpretations/suggestions regarding the

results since it usually wont be so black and white.

Things you might not think to add but are appropriate for an entry

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• Supplementary material must be affixed permanently to the lab notebook– Keep in chronological order– Use tape/glue stick to attach– Sign and date over the edge of the page

• Material that may be added:– Photographs– Charts or graphs– Preprinted tables for common procedures that

you do (i.e. if you’re working on a synthesis and changing the amounts of things)

Adding supplementary information to your lab notebook

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Examples

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Examples

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• Fill in TOC– Much easier to go back and look over

previous results

• Make photocopies of your lab notebook– Notebook is property of the lab, might need

to make copies when you are leaving if you haven’t finished writing something up

• Archival system– Make sure people know where your lab

notebooks are when you leave

Useful Procedures

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• http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/labnotebooks

• http://www.iphandbook.org/handbook/ch08/p02/

Additional Resources

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