Writing Your Abstract

Examples of abstracts. While most abstracts should include all of the elements listed here, all elements may not be appropriate for all categories.

Objective or Goal:

State the objective, goal, or hypothesis upon which the project is based. Example: My objective was to learn if the feeding habits of hummingbirds are affected by color.

Materials and Methods:

Indicate the materials, methods, and experimental design used in your project. Briefly describe your experiment or engineering methods.

Results:

Summarize the results of your experiment and indicate how they pertain to your objective.

Conclusion/Discussion:

Indicate if your results supported your hypothesis or enabled you to attain your objective. Discuss briefly how information from this project expands our knowledge about the category subject.

As illustration of this structure, here are two examples of abstracts in the

Life Sciences, and the

Physical Sciences.