Lab questions...

A couple email questions about lab reports that are due this week...

"Could you give more specifics on how to write the introduction for the lab report. "
The Lab Report Format sheet has been updated on my website to include a bit about Introductions (http://www.drbodwin.com/teaching/genchemlab/labrep2013a.pdf).

The Introduction eases your reader into the content of the lab report. Some instructors and some disciplines don't use Introductions in their lab reports, I like them because they give me an indication of your understanding of the theory behind the experiment rather than just the (sometimes robotic) procedure you performed.

"I am a little confused how to report my final K value.  I got an answer of 176.  Using range over 2, I calculated my error as 57.  Does this mean I should report my K value as 170 +/- 50 because we should only have one sig fig in our error?  I'm also running in to the same problem for my "El".  For example, one of my average El's was 4528.5 +/- 130. My understanding then, is I should report that as 4500 +/- 100?  Also, should I show the work of how I got my original and then round because of significant figures?"
Good attempt at error, you're very close. For the K value, you're good except for the rounding... 57 should round to 60. Your "error digit" here is in the "tens" digit, so you should round your result to the "tens" digit, 176 should round to 180. The result you should report is 180 +/- 60.
Your result for the Beer's Law constant is a good example of an exception to the "rules" we used for the error on K. Let's look at the error part first... your range-over-2 error was 130... for the sake of this discussion, let's say it was really 131.8274 when it displayed on your calculator. We want to round the error to a single digit EXCEPT when that digit is "1". Why is that? Well, every time you round any number, you are accepting or introducing some error in that reported value. When we round a calculated error, we are introducing error into our error. Yikes, this could get out of control! As an example, let's look at 2 cases:
Case 1: You have calculated an error of 944. Rounding that to a single digit (sig fig) gives you 900. You've essentially thrown away 44 out of 944, that's a little under 5%, and we can probably live with that.
Case 2: You have calculated an error of 144. Rounding that to a single digit (sig fig) gives you 100. Now you've thrown away 44 out of 144, that's over 30%. Not good.
So the "rule" for rounding error is "Always round error to a single digit (sig fig), unless that single digit is "1", in which case you should keep two digits (sig figs) of error." Looking back at Case 2, if we round our calculated error of 144 to two digits, we get a rounded error of 140. We've still thrown away 4 out of 144, but that's under 3%, so I think we can live with it. Depending upon the exact values of the numbers and the type of numbers they are, many scientists will advocate for keeping two digits of error if the first digit is "1" or "2"... If you work through a series similar to Case 1 & 2 for values 244, 344, 444, 544, 644, 744, 844 you'll see that the whole idea of "error on error" can be very interesting and can certainly lead to debate... For our purposes in Gen Chem, I think we can stick with "Always round error to a single digit (sig fig), unless that single digit is "1", in which case you should keep two digits (sig figs) of error."
Getting back to your original question, the error in {el} should be rounded to 130, and the reported value should be rounded to the same place the error is rounded, in this case, the "tens" digit again, so this should be reported as 4530+/-130. You ARE planning to include units on that number, right? As for the "show your work" part of your question, the answer is pretty much always yes, although for common (and hopefully trivial) things like taking an average or adding up a series of numbers, you can just say "the average is XXXX" or "the total is XXXXX". Show a sample of how you calculated one of the {el} values (with an appropriate number of sig figs, but don't worry too much about rounding at that point) and then you can report "Average {el} = 4530+/-130". Remember, it's always better to show a little too much detail of your calculation than not enough... When in doubt, show it.
Error (or uncertainty, or variability) is an important tool in our understanding of the experiments we do and it takes practice. Gen Chem is a good place to start practicing. With practice, error becomes very natural and automatic and you'll find that you start estimating error and including error without even thinking about it.

Other questions, let me know...

Lab Reports

The exact requirements for a lab report will vary from field to field, class to class, even instructor to instructor. If you're looking for an example of a "good" lab report for my Gen Chem class, try this one:
http://www.drbodwin.com/teaching/genchemlab/iodinationlabreport12a.pdf
The most common problem I see in lab reports is that students don't always explain the experiment and its results in a way that makes it (somewhat) clear that the concepts behind the experiment are understood. The purpose of a Gen Chem experiment is almost never "We collected a bunch of numerical data, made some observations, and calculated/determined this result". What does that result mean? How is that result related to the concepts we talked about in class? How can that result help inform the exercises and exam questions you'll see in the classroom?
One of the harder things for students to do is get a feel for "reasonable" answers because Gen Chem level students don't have a lot of experience looking at these answers. Activation energy is a great example of this. If you have no feeling for how activation energy relates to the observed rate of a reaction, you might calculate an activation energy of 25 J/mol for some problem. Is that a fast reaction or a slow reaction? If you've only every done on-paper activation energy problems, that might be a hard question to answer. The advantage of doing experiments is that you have personally observed what happened, you've gained experience that will help you make some of these judgement calls. For the iodination of acetone experiment, the reaction is fast enough to easily observe, but it's not so fast that it blows up in your hand. The activation energy for the iodination of acetone is somewhere around 80-100 kJ/mol. If 80-100kJ/mol is the activation energy for a reaction that's "kinda fast, but not super fast", what do you think about that 25 J/mol activation energy reaction? {Pay attention to units.}
Lab experiments are a great way to build your knowledge base. When you're writing a lab report, think about the bigger picture and show the reader that you've recognized the link between classroom exercises and the first-hand experience you've had in the lab.