Scientific notation - How many times larger?

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Objective

SWBAT determine how many times larger one amount in scientific notation is than another.

Big Idea

How many times bigger is this than that? Get kids to compare very large and very small amounts, enhancing their number sense.

Lesson Author

Jeff Li MTP

New York, NY

Grade Level

Eighth grade

Subjects

Math

Number Sense and Operations

Exponents

Standards

8.EE.A.1

Know and apply the properties of integer exponents to generate equivalent numerical expressions. For example, 32 Ã 3-5 = 3-3 = 1/33 = 1/27.

8.EE.A.3

Use numbers expressed in the form of a single digit times an integer power of 10 to estimate very large or very small quantities, and to express how many times as much one is than the other. For example, estimate the population of the United States as 3 Ã 108 and the population of the world as 7 Ã 109, and determine that the world population is more than 20 times larger.

8.EE.A.4

Perform operations with numbers expressed in scientific notation, including problems where both decimal and scientific notation are used. Use scientific notation and choose units of appropriate size for measurements of very large or very small quantities (e.g., use millimeters per year for seafloor spreading). Interpret scientific notation that has been generated by technology.

8.EE.B.5

Graph proportional relationships, interpreting the unit rate as the slope of the graph. Compare two different proportional relationships represented in different ways. For example, compare a distance-time graph to a distance-time equation to determine which of two moving objects has greater speed.

MP1

Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

MP2

Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

MP6

Attend to precision.

MP7

Look for and make use of structure.

Warm Up

10 minutes

Each day, students complete a warm-up that usually consists of spiraling the previous day's material, in addition to older material. Warm-up problems also sometimes extend lessons that students have encountered before to more unfamiliar contexts.

For a video narrative about how I structure each lesson, and how the warm-up fits in, click here.

Play of the Day

40 minutes

Huddle

10 minutes

For the huddle in this lesson, I like to talk about #3, since it involves three different items that are very very small, medium, and very very large...

The mass of a hydrogen atom is 1.67 x 10^-27 kilograms.

The mass of an average human being is roughly 6.35 x 10¹ kilograms.

The mass of the Earth is 5.97 x 10²⁴ kilograms.

We spiral the idea of how to find how much larger one thing is compared to another while marveling at the number of people that are needed to equal the mass of the Earth!