Featured Activities: How dense are we

Objectives

• Review of computation: order of operations, directed numbers, scientific notation, estimation, exact and approximate answers.

Vocabulary

• Scientific notation
• Population
• Density
• Significant figures

About the Lesson

Population values are interesting in that it doesn't make sense to talk about the number of people that live in a state or country as this quantity will most likely change whilst reading the actual value. Scientific notation and significant figures provide an order of magnitude which is a much better way of communicating such figures. This activity helps students learn how to use scientific notation on the TI-Nspire CX through the context of population, area and population density.