Hi Readers, (especially math pro people)

Hi Readers (especially Math pro people),

First of all I would like to thank all my followers for the support.

Initially, I was tempted to do videos but said a big ‘NO’ to myself.

The reason being students need the ability to read and comprehend.

This is illustrated clearly in this quote

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” – Groucho Marx 

During the lockdown, let me reiterate ‘during the lockdown parents are the best teachers’.

Avaneesh Raghuram, my student, who is training to be a teacher has penned down a scenario of a student who wants to learn “Exponents”.

I take great pleasure in sharing the same

"Sarita, a sixth-grader, was assigned a task to make a basic-notes of the chapter exponents and powers. But she struggled a lot to find the meanings and other related points. She then went to her father and he helped her and made her understand the concepts clearly.

Sarita started asking her father the following question:

What are exponents?

Exponents or powers are the numbers that determine the number of times a given number is to be multiplied to itself.

What is a base?

Bases are the numbers that get multiplied to itself based on the exponent given.

How to denote the exponents and bases?

We denote the bases and exponents as a^b which means a is multiplied to itself b times.

How to read them?

The verbal representation of exponents and powers can be in many ways as per everyone’s convenience. It can be read as

- “a to the exponent b” or

- “a raised to power b” or

- “a to the power b”, or

- “b to the base a”, or simply

- “a to the b”.

Then Sarita’s father gave an example

For example: 2^4 simply means the multiplication of 2 to itself 4 times.

So, 2^4 = 2 × 2 × 2×2 = 16

(Similarly, we can compute for different bases with different exponents!)

Sarita wanted to know about:

Why do we need exponents? Is there any relevance in real life?

We need exponents because:

-  We need to complete our assignments .

-  Useful for surveyors and doctors in checking the rise and fall in population

-  To calculate the hike and fall of COVID-19 patients that raise exponentially.

But Sarita’s questionnaire did not stop there. She also, wanted to know:

Who discovered or used the notations of exponents and when?

Nicholas Chuquet used the notation of exponents in the 15th century. Later Henricus Grammateus and Michael Stifel used them in the 16th century. The word Exponent was coined by Michael Stifel in 1544. The exponents are also known as indices and that term was coined by Samuel Jeake in 1696.

The next day, Sarita presented her notes and her teacher was pleased for her meticulous research work with understanding and gave her an A+!

Back home she thanked her father and they went for ice cream treat, where the ice cream has trillions of molecules in it

(i.e.) 100,000,000,000,000 = 10^14. ”

Hope, you all enjoyed reading!

Stay tuned for further sharing’s.