Writing material and method of a report: What to be included for better marks.

The material and method section of your report is very important. People generally make mistakes by putting general and vague things here. But it should be properly structured starting from materials used, the methodology of experiments to be done in the project with details plan of execution through flow diagrams. Moreover, you are to include instruments used during the experiments. There are some examples

1. Suppose, you are fabricating a machine: First, you need to give, machine drawing with proper labelling. Then, you should go part by part the materials to be used with proper dimension. Also, you need to state the methodology of fabrication with flow diagrams. You can say that the plan of working. If you want to do experimentation, then according to parameters which you would like to change and instruments which will be required to measure the variations are to be included with the proper specification. You can show the procedure also.

2. Suppose, you are doing a research project with some material: In this scenario, please mention the material and method of synthesis of the material. After the synthesis, you will do some experimentation on the material. Then, with a flow diagram mention the methodology. State the experiments procedure one by one.

3. Suppose you are doing analysis project: These projects are done with software. In that case, you describe your idea of the analysis and the parameters which you want to change. Then the software package which you have taken along with its specification. Then, you include the flow diagram of your project according to aim.  

For, this section you should include good flow diagrams, schematic diagrams, configuration diagram or line diagrams whichever suits you. There are some software packages which can be used for drawing diagrams.

1. Autocad for machine drawing

2. Draw.io for line diagram, flow diagram or any kind of configuration diagram

3. Concept draw for schematic diagrams for elaborating chemical process, chemical engineering flow processes, various manufacturing process, flow diagrams etc

4. Microsoft Visio for flow diagrams

5. There are lots of software packages for analysis such as Ansys, Comsol, Pro E, Katia, Scilab, Wintherm, Lisa etc.