In high school and college, the report you’re most likely to encounter is the lab report. This is the name given to the written results of a scientific experiment. It doesn’t matter whether you’re testing to see if music helps flowers grow or whether you’ve discovered a new kind of subatomic particle—the structure of the lab report is nearly the same.

Here are the basic components of a lab report. They usually follow this order.

Title page
Abstract (a brief summary of the entire report)
Body of the report
Introduction
Background (a summary of previous research or lab experiments)
Methods (the procedure and materials you used to conduct the experiment)
Results (the raw numbers from your experiment)
Discussion (interpreting the results for your reader)
Recommendations (what further research or experiments are needed)
Reference list (the sources you used in writing the report)