Katie measures the mass of a chunk of gold to be 9.67 g. The accepted mass of the gold chunk is 9.82 g.

How would I calculate the percent error and report my answer to two significant figures?

| 9.67- 9.82 | / 9.82 * 100

I got -1.5 .. Is this right?

That looks ok to me but I would add a % sign after -1.5. Also, since you show that as an absolute value in your formula I would think the answer to be +; however, in chemistry I always keep the - sign. That is, I would remove the absolute sign in the equation. Follow what you've been taught.

To calculate the percent error, you can use the following formula:

Percent Error = (|Measured Value - Accepted Value| / Accepted Value) * 100

In this case, the measured value is 9.67 g and the accepted value is 9.82 g.

Let's plug in the values into the formula:

Percent Error = (|9.67 g - 9.82 g| / 9.82 g) * 100

First, subtract the measured value from the accepted value and take the absolute value of the difference:

|9.67 g - 9.82 g| = 0.15 g

Next, divide the absolute difference by the accepted value:

0.15 g / 9.82 g ≈ 0.015279 g/g

Multiply the result by 100 to convert it to a percentage:

0.015279 g/g * 100 ≈ 1.53%

Now, we need to round the answer to two significant figures. Since the first non-zero digit after the decimal is 5, we round up the preceding digit:

1.53% rounded to two significant figures ≈ 1.5%

Therefore, the percent error, rounded to two significant figures, is approximately 1.5%.