This week your student will learn the rules for multiplying and dividing expressions with exponents. Exponents are a way of keeping track of how many times a number has been repeatedly multiplied. For example, instead of writing
Using our understanding of repeated multiplication, weβll figure out several βrulesβ for exponents. For example, suppose we want to understand the expression
Using similar reasoning, we can figure out that when working with powers of powers, we multiply the exponents together:
These patterns will lead to other discoveries later on.
Here is a task to try with your student:
Solution:
This week your student will use powers of 10 to work with very large or very small numbers. For example, the United States mint has made over 500,000,000,000 pennies. In order to understand this number, we have to count all of the zeros. Since there are 11 of them this means there are 500 billion pennies. Using powers of 10, we can write this as
Not only do powers of 10 make it easier to write this number, but they also help avoid errors since it would be very easy to add or take away a zero when writing out the decimal without realizing! Writing numbers in this way is called scientific notation. We can use the exponent rules learned earlier to estimate and solve problems with scientific notation.
Here is a task to try with your student:
This table shows the top speeds of different vehicles.
vehicle | speed (kilometers per hour) |
---|---|
sports car | |
Apollo Command/Service Module | |
jet boat | |
autonomous drone |
Solutions
IM 6β8 Math was originally developed by Open Up Resources and authored by Illustrative Mathematics, and is copyright 2017-2019 by Open Up Resources. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). OUR's 6β8 Math Curriculum is available at https://openupresources.org/math-curriculum/.