Planning tool

Students will:

• write numbers in scientific form
• understand the reason for using standard form
• use numbers in scientific form in calculations.

Some students may:

• confuse the term ‘significant figures’ with decimal places or the number of digits required.
• find interpreting the display on a calculator that appears in significant form challenging.

Help students to understand that a number in scientific form is often an approximation of the true value.

The Learning from home activities are designed to be used flexibly by teachers, parents and carers, as well as the students themselves. They can be used in a number of ways including to consolidate and extend learning done at school or for home schooling.

Learning intention

• We are expanding knowledge of place value and powers of 10.
• We are revising knowledge of significant figures and rounding.
• We are learning about very large and very small numbers.

Why are we learning about this?

• Sometimes a number is too large or too small to write. Mathematicians use a form of shorthand to express such numbers. You may see this on your calculator when the number is too long to fit on the display.
• Time can be measured in very small units such as nanoseconds (10^–9).
• In sciences such as space and biology, there are occasions when very large distances or very small viruses need to be measured.

What to do

Very large and very small numbers

1. Open the resource Very large and very small numbers. This resource describes what is scientific notation, or standard form, and how it is used to represent very large and very small numbers in a convenient way.
2. Work through the student resources that include worked examples and problems for you to try.

Standard index form matching game

1. Open the game Standard index form matching.
2. Match the numbers and their standard index form. Write down the matched pairs, or screen capture your results. Explain how you worked out the matched pairs. Refer to an example.
3. Can you beat the clock? There are different levels for you to try.

Success criteria

• I can recognise a number written in standard form.
• I can write a number in standard form.
• I can round a number to a given number of significant figures.