EE Introduction


Students;

It looks like several of you are nearly ready to begin experimental work.  To begin lab work you need to write an "introduction" next.  This is where you will use your references gathered so far.  The value of an introduction is that is prepares you to do research.  You will find soem good ideas in others' papers and some information that informs your experiment.  If you skip this you find yourself often frustrated because you run into problems which others have already faced and found solutions for.  A great introduction makes your experimental work a lot simpler.  You are focussed before you begin.  You will be able to edit it as much as you want later, but leaving this all till later produces a weak introduction; and the examiner reading your paper will be disappointed by the first part and carry their feeling through the rest of your paper no matter how awesome your experiment is.

So how to write a good "introduction?" 

You must provide a context for your experiment. This means, you need to explain important ideas the reader needs to understand; to do this you will have some references to textbooks or references.  You often briefly describe similar or related experiments to give the reader important related information that your experiment will build on; to do this you need to have some references to other experiments you describe whose information precedes your own lab work.  Since you will be doing an experiment, you will need to check (and reference) similar experiments to find a good method for collecting how to get your data.  As you do this you need to be explaining your thinking to the reader. 

Pretend you are giving the examiner a tour of your experiment.  First you need to introduce them to what you are doing.  They will want to know: where did you get this idea?  How did you narrow down to this experiment?  What made you interested in this topic?  What is the scientific context for this topic?  Why is this topic valuable to learn about?  What do you expect to find out or understand after doing this experiment?

This is a 500 word (2 page) explanation of the background or context of what you are doing an experiment on.  For example, if I was doing an experiment on comparing pigments in new leaves to mature leaves, I would have to explain in my EE:

  1. what pigments are for in leaves
  2. what kind of pigments lieaves have
  3. why some leaves have different pigments


--
Mr. Jay Reimer
Gyeonggi Suwon International School 

29-3 Young Tong Dong, Young Tong Gu
Suwon City, Gyeonggi Do
Republic of Korea 443-808
   school:  82.31.695.2860
   mobile:  82.10.2782.2806

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