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The lab director, Tyler, sent out something about BAR. This is
something<br>
in general about using Excel for making tables and graphs.<br>
<br>
We highly suggest you use Excel or a similar program to do tables,
calculations<br>
for those tables and graphs. I discussed some of this during
lecture but here's<br>
some of that information again. While visiting some labs I saw some
people<br>
not doing the proper things.<br>
<br>
Make sure your graph uses the whole page and spread the data out
(good use<br>
of the axis) so it takes up most of the space of the graph. Don't
make the labels<br>
and titles huge (use 10 or 12 point font). You can find
instructions for making good<br>
graphs and examples of good graphs at the links below.<br>
<br>
In the first link there are two graphs. The one graph doesn't take
up the full page<br>
since I had to shrink it so I could write on it at the top and
bottom. This graph<br>
shows you choose points from the best-fit line for use in sample
calculations for<br>
slope (not your actual data points). You will be doing linear fits
this semester where<br>
you'll need the slope. The 2nd graph is a better example of what a
graph should<br>
look like. It also shows an example of when you have more than one
set of data<br>
plotted. In that case you need a legend and you can bring the
legend inside the<br>
graph area to allow the graph to spread out and occupy the whole
page. You<br>
don't need a legend when there's only one set of data plotted since
your title<br>
should indicate what's being plotted. <br>
<br>
<b> </b><a
href="http://chemistry.osu.edu/%7Erzellmer/sample_graphs.pdf"><b>Sample
Graphs</b></a><br>
<br>
The link below takes you to the departmental page which gives
instructions<br>
about lab reports and graphing. At the bottom of the page there's a
link to an<br>
example of a good report with a graph.<br>
<br>
<b> </b><a href="https://uglabs.cbc.osu.edu/gc-labreport/"><b>Chem
Lab Report - Departmental Guidelines for Writing a Lab Report</b></a><br>
<br>
There's also a link you can use to help get you started with Excel
if you've never<br>
used it before. It's a simple example for a density graph. Go to
the following link<br>
and you will find this, along with other useful links.<br>
<br>
<a
href="http://chemistry.osu.edu/%7Erzellmer/excel/excel.htm"><b>Using
MS Excel for Reports</b></a><br>
<br>
Many of my examples use an older version of Excel (Excel 2003). I
have a link<br>
explaining the major differences between it and the newer versions.
Click tabs,<br>
right-click, etc. and explore what it can do and where to find
things. There are Excel<br>
tutorials and videos all over the web (YouTube, Microsoft's web
site). If you aren't<br>
sure about how to do something after looking for help please ask me.<br>
<br>
You should set the margins for your graphs to zero in Excel and you<br>
want them to stay that way when you import the graphs into your Word<br>
document. One would think Word would do that automatically but it<br>
doesn't, instead resetting the margins to agree with those set in
Word.<br>
You don't want it to do this and then simply drag the graph to
expand<br>
it's size since it can distort things. You'll find another link at
the link<br>
above explaining how to change the margins and page orientation on a<br>
page in Word when importing another file into the Word document<br>
(e.g. importing a graph or table from Excel) so the margins
correspond<br>
to what's in the imported file.<br>
<br>
I always receive questions about how to set sig. fig. in tables and
graphs<br>
in Excel. You can't actually set the sig. fig. but you can set the
number of<br>
decimal places Excel displays in order to get the correct number of
sig. fig.<br>
I've explained this in at least one of the links on my web page at
the link about<br>
using MS Excel given above. There you will find several links. The
following<br>
one addresses formatting numbers in the tables<br>
<br>
<a href="http://chemistry.osu.edu/%7Erzellmer/excel/excel.txt"><b>Using
Excel for Calculations and Graphs</b></a><br>
<br>
If you format your data with the proper # of s.f. in your table and
then make<br>
your plot you should get the same # of s.f. on the axes for the
graphs.<br>
<br>
Dr. Zellmer
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