Writing Civil Engineering Lab Reports

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Tom Siller, Civil Engineering

Log books are a good place to record calibration information. You should always note when the last time a piece of equipment was calibrated because this is a common source of error. For example, your equipment hasn't been calibrated in over ten years. Because of this, it's off five pounds all the time. You need to know this. If you're on a diet, you want to know that your scale is five pounds off, so why wouldn't you want to know that your equipment is off?

Another source of error is not using the same piece of equipment every time you perform a test. For example, you're measuring the distance between two marks with a pair of dial clippers. Midway through the test, you set the clippers down. If you use another pair to continue the test, and that pair is off even a little bit, you've introduced a source of error.