Question

Question about writing an abstract for a formal report..

Answer 1

My lab report is regarding enthalpy hydration of anhydrous MgSO4. I feel as though my abstract still needs more information but am unsure what numbers are necessary to include. For example here is my abstract (still working on it):
"The purpose of this experiment was to determine the enthalpy change for the hydration of anhydrous MgSO4. This quantity was determined by method of isothermal calorimetry. To find the enthalpy change for hydration, the enthalpy of dissolution of MgSO4 and MgSO4•7H2O were used in accordance with Hess's Law. For this experiment the mean dissolution value of MgSO4•7H2O, 7.95 kJ/mol was accounted for in the calculation of enthalpy hydration. As a result of a failed MgSO4 trial only one value of dissolution was accounted for, -5.47 × 101 kJ/mol. The difference of these values resulted in the enthalpy hydration for this experiment to be -62.65 kJ/mol. "

Answer 2

It looks fine to me. Things you could include could be like, the error in your experiment (if you did error propagation), accepted values from the literature, deviation from the literature. Though i feel like (other than the error) you should include these in the discussion and keep the abstract short as it should be.