Ants versus humans

This task requires students to work with very large and small values expressed both in scientific notation and in decimal notation (standard form). In addition, students need to convert units of mass. The solution below converts the mass of humans into grams; however, we could just as easily converted the mass of ants into kilograms. Students are unable to go directly to a calculator without taking into account all of the considerations mentioned above. Even after converting units and decimals to scientific notation, students should be encouraged to use the structure of scientific notation to regroup the products by extending the properties of operations and then use the properties of exponents to more fluently perform the calculations involved rather than rely heavily on a calculator.
Resource ID#: 42406 Type: Problem-Solving Task
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General Information

Subject(s): Mathematics
Grade Level(s): 8
Intended Audience: Educators educators, Parents
Instructional Time: 15 Minute(s)
Keywords: Ants versus humans, ants, versus, humans, scientific notation, decimal notation, cpalms, icpalms, illustrativemathematics.org, illustrative mathematics, tasks, mathematics, math, Florida standards, resource, free, freely available, problems-based learning, student activities
Instructional Component Type(s): Problem-Solving Task
Resource Collection: Illustrative Mathematics

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