alright thats what I wanted to know thanks a lot jhan

Originally Posted by krup92

question: for bio 1a03, there are 3 lectures in a week and a lab. is it best to have the lab after the 3rd lecture, or anytime in the week.

Personally, labs ARE 3 hours long, so I like to have at least a 1 hour break BEFORE so that you can prep up. Also, it sucks to have 4 hours of class in a row - you get really hungry, and you attention span dwindles...

I kinda forget to do the pre-lab questions sometimes and that break before the lab period helps

Yeah...my only experience with labs has been one period long (At a time). I'm kind of nervous about this three hour thing! I hear we usually have to hand in the labs at the end, too :(. Has anyone gotten their stickers yet from McMaster?

How does lab work exactly, I mean it's 3 hours long.
Is it literally 3 hours of lab or is it we do the lab and the remainder of the time we get some time to work on the lab reports

Labs are three hours long. You do your experiment and fill out your lab report simultaneously.

Depending on your TA, you may have to be really pedantic with your report.

Even if intuition tells you that given the data that this supports that theory,
you really need to "dumb" it down in your report and cite the obvious and connect the dots
while showing examples along the way.

This made it hard for me and my Physics partner since we had a habit of separating our work-sheets
and doing different pages. We had to communicate and sometimes re-do our experiments because of some
error.

Most, if not all, the time, the TA's will ask you to include error calculations.

Don't stress over it. Enjoy your summer break and worry about it later.

labs must be pretty big for it to last 3 hours

Originally Posted by cjdzl

labs must be pretty big for it to last 3 hours

Yep. The trick is to be quick and to be precise.

Do the work now and whine later.

You get used to the 3 hours pretty quickly, and since you're busy doing work, it usually doesnt FEEL like 3 hours unless you're hungry I've been in the lab for 4.5hrs before, and it felt like no time at all (a 4hr lab that ran long). Also, if you're done before the 3hrs, you're allowed to leave. As for what you do in the lab, it depends on the course.

For chem, you're almost always out early, and you do the lab, writing results as you go through it, and then you do calculations/discussion/conclusion/whatever else they want after everything is cleaned up. As soon as your station is cleaned up and you've handed in the duplicate of your work (the lab notebooks for chem have carbonless copies) you can leave.

For bio, it was just doing the lab and writing the results. I think for the informal labs there was something you had to hand in the next day? I'm not 100% sure though. And for the one formal lab, the chicken wing one, it was one report for every pair, and it was due either 1 or 2 weeks after the lab--I think 1 week, but I don't remember exactly. We were also usually done bio labs early.

For physics, each group of 3 goes at their own pace--my group always finished early, my friend's group often ran late...you work through a set of practical activities and every so often you have to get the TA to come and sign that you've done them. Your lab notebook never leaves the lab, so there are never any postlabs, except for the one uncertainties sheet in the very first lab. That's for 1B03, but I think for 1BB3 there are more formal lab reports--I haven't taken it, so I don't know exactly what it entails.

Kin 1Y03/1YY3 are a mixture of lab and tutorial--you do little experiments and examine specimens, and the TAs also go through concepts with you. These usually do take the full time, but they're only 2 hrs long.

As for scheduling, I agree that it's nice to have an hour break before a lab. The worst part of my schedule last term was having a class in MDCL, then a class in TSH (that often ran late), and then a 4hr lab in ABB. 6 hrs of class in a row sucks. I often skipped my class in TSH, and I rarely ever skip class.

Would it be better to have a tutorial after a lecture, or vice versa? I've heard that the labs aren't always related to the content being taught in lecture, so am I safe to assume that it doesn't matter if the lab is before the lecture?

If you have, say, a lab on a Monday and the lectures are Tues, Wed, Fri, it could matter or it might not. Bio, chem & kin are on a two-week rotation, so you have labs every other week, and it takes two weeks for the whole class to complete a lab. I remember this being more of a problem for chem (both first year and 2nd year orgo) because people who had the lab Monday week A were often screwed over for the prelab, since we often wouldn't end up learning the material in class until the end of week A/beginning of week B. Sometimes, the prof would have a little 'aside' in which they'd give a brief blurb about the lab to help out people with earlier time slots, but not always. I think the best time for a rotation lab is Monday week B--that way you're not waiting forever to do the lab, way after everyone else, but you usually learn the stuff in class beforehand and you have the benefit of half the class already having done it, so they can help you out with the prelab. The only problem is that you don't know which week you'll be until the first day of class. It's usually all odd sections are one week and all even sections are another, you just don't know which is which. If you want to be safe, you can pick a lab section later in the week, but Friday labs SUCK...particularly Friday 2:30 labs. I've had a LOT of experience with this lab slot, and it's awful, ESPECIALLY if it's Week B, since you have to wait FOREVER to do the lab. It's even worse in first year since most of your midterms are on Fridays, so you won't have much time in between finishing classes and doing the midterm...and if you're already drained after a long lab, the last thing you want to do is write a midterm. Friday earlier in the day isn't too bad though.

If you're not a morning person, I'd recommend against 8:30am labs. My bio 1AA3 was at 8:30 and I was half asleep, pipetting E coli onto the lid of my petri dish instead of onto the agar, picking up my gel stained with ethidium bromide (a carcinogen) with bare hands, contaminating ALL of my pipette tips with chicken with bacteria in the chicken wing lab, and not realizing until the results were all screwed up, just to name a few None of which would have happened if I was actually conscious during the lab.

Depending on your TA, you may have to be really pedantic with your report.

All but one of my TAs for chem/orgo have been really chill. And then there was the one orgo TA that kept taking off marks because my report was too short, even though he told me I'd included all of the necessary information. He told me to write bigger to make it longer, and when I did, my mark jumped 14%. *sigh*

Wow Nerual, thanks for giving such a detailed reply to my question . On my mock timetable, I think I've put my lab on a Monday :(, I guess I should change that around. The time slots are kind of limited, though...it's either 8:30 or 2:30. I'd rather have it at 10:30!!! By the way, are there formal reports due for each lab that you do or is it just "yeah, you did it. you win process marks!". Sorry for asking so many questions, I'm just really nervous about first year XD. Is one report usually handed in per group or is everything individual?!

Originally Posted by Angoose

Wow Nerual, thanks for giving such a detailed reply to my question . On my mock timetable, I think I've put my lab on a Monday :(, I guess I should change that around. The time slots are kind of limited, though...it's either 8:30 or 2:30. I'd rather have it at 10:30!!! By the way, are there formal reports due for each lab that you do or is it just "yeah, you did it. you win process marks!". Sorry for asking so many questions, I'm just really nervous about first year XD. Is one report usually handed in per group or is everything individual?!

If Monday fits in your schedule really well & looks like the best day to have the lab, then keep it there and wait til the first class to see what the rotation is, and then change it to the second week if you're in the first week. Or, after timetables come out in Aug, if you get a Monday slot, email one of the profs and tell them you have an appointment that can't be changed on whatever Monday, and ask if you'll be in the first or second week for the rotation so that you can adjust your schedule so you won't have a lab on that day. They might just say, you're allowed to miss one lab and do a make-up at the end of term, but it can't hurt to ask!

Also, this wasn't as much of a problem for bio/physics, so if you have a bio lab on a Monday I wouldn't worry too much about it I had physics lab on a Monday, and sometimes I hadn't learned the stuff, but for those labs you're allowed your textbook and it's working in a group, so it didn't really affect it that much. Physics labs are every week, so the labs and lectures synch together better.

We used to have first-year chem labs at 11:30 also! I loved that timeslot

For chem, I think there's one formal report per term. You're given a week after your lab to complete it, and then you hand it in the drop boxes (since it'll be due on the week when you don't have a lab). These are individual--even if the lab is completed in partners, you're expected to write down all your results and come up with your own conclusion/discussion and write your own lab report. The prelab usually consists of an intro/purpose and some prelab questions. They don't make you write out the procedure, which is AWESOME. It's pretty much the only time you won't have to, so enjoy it while it lasts

For physics 1B03, it's mostly process marks and then they randomly mark 2 labs (out of 9 I think), but all the rest are just completion marks, but the TA will usually only sign that you've completed them if they're relatively correct. Everyone is responsible for filling out their own lab notebook and lab sheets. There are no formal lab reports for this course There's a prelab quiz-type thing that you have to hand in at the beginning of each lab. Sometimes, if you do poorly enough, Alex (the lab coordinator) will make you go out into the hall to redo it before letting you into the lab...other times he'll just tsk tsk at you The quizzes aren't for marks though, and they're not long at all. The physics labs aren't really what you typically think of when you think 'lab'...the profs tend to call them 'practical exercises', which definitely is more accurate.

For bio, my memory of the labs is really sketchy for some reason...I know for 1M03 we had prelab quizzes, but there aren't even labs in 1M03 anymore I don't remember if there were also prelab quizzes in 1A03. There was a [email protected] prelab that took forever because you had to write out the procedure in detail. I think the marks were mostly completion marks though--if you could explain your results, then it didn't really matter what you got. The one formal lab report was in partners.

For kin, there's a prelab quiz which you MUST do or you get zero for the lab. You also must attend the lab, or you get zero for that lab. If you do the prelab quiz AND attend the lab, then your lab mark is your prelab quiz mark. Thus, the labs are very chill, since what you actually do in lab isn't marked at all--it's mostly just helping you study/learn the material for your weekly tests/the exam.

Hope that helps!!!

You're helping me out a lot , thanks! Oh, it sounds like there are only one or two formal lab reports for each course...that's a bit of a relief. My experience with labs has generally been bad, and I'd hate to imagine writing a lab report every other week for marks :(. I'm not even taking physics 1B03 though, since I wasn't thinking very clearly in high school and decided not to do any physics. Now I have to do the L03, which doesn't have labs...but is a waste of a course in a sense. Judging from your descriptions, I guess there's no avoiding the prelabs and prepwork.... Hopefully labs don't get any longer over the years. Once again, you've been a great help and maybe I'll see you around campus in September >: O.

Originally Posted by Angoose

You're helping me out a lot , thanks! Oh, it sounds like there are only one or two formal lab reports for each course...that's a bit of a relief. My experience with labs has generally been bad, and I'd hate to imagine writing a lab report every other week for marks :(. I'm not even taking physics 1B03 though, since I wasn't thinking very clearly in high school and decided not to do any physics. Now I have to do the L03, which doesn't have labs...but is a waste of a course in a sense. Judging from your descriptions, I guess there's no avoiding the prelabs and prepwork.... Hopefully labs don't get any longer over the years. Once again, you've been a great help and maybe I'll see you around campus in September >: O.

np
Yeah, there aren't that many formal lab reports in first year--it's the prelabs that will take up the most time, but even most of those aren't that bad--it's really just bio 1A03 that had annoying prelabs!

Haha, in 2nd year there are some 4-hr labs, but they're usually for lab courses--Biochem 2L06, Chembio 2L03, Chem 2LA3/2LB3, etc. I think the Bio lab course (Bio 2L03) only has a 3hr lab though, but they have more formal reports. So depending what you go into in second year, you might end up with longer labs Don't let it scare you off though, it sounds bad but you get used to it pretty quickly--it even makes 3-hr labs seem short!

Yeah, I hope to see you around! Good luck with everything

I was wondering whether CB 2L03/2A03 had EOW labs or weekly ones?
thanks a lot again Lauren; you're invaluable to the first/2nd years on here

Np

For 2A03 do you mean ****? For us, the course code was 2AA3, and the non-chembios took 2A03. If they changed it or if I got the wrong course, let me know

Both 2AA3 and 2L03 had weekly labs. For 2AA3, sometimes the lab would span two weeks, but that wasn't common. Usually you'd need both a prelab and a postlab done for each week, occasionally along with a random lab assignment. Very rarely, they'd give you an extra week for the postlab, which was the best thing ever, unless you end up with two postlabs + a prelab due on the same day

Most of 2L03 labs span more than one week, so there's a lot less weekly work to do for it The first three labs take a week each (I think), but then labs 4-5 take 3-4 weeks each and you do them at the same time. Labs 6-7 take 1-2 weeks each, I think.

Orgo labs are still every other week, though