Picturing exponential growth, powers of 10, can be hard for any of us to imagine. The spreadsheet has the flexibility to enable us to explore the powers of 10 and to get a visual image of them. We can see the difference in shape between odd and even powers, and get a sense of the speed of exponential growth. We use powers of ten to gain a sense not only of big numbers but of how big spreadsheets can be.
Tag: exponents
Moore’s Law
It was one of the most amazing visions of the future ever made. In 1965 Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel, proposed a law governing the future of computing. He originally proposed that the number of components on a chip would double every year. Later he revised that law to doubling every two years. You can take a look at the real data of CPU development over the past 40 years and see if it in fact has followed Moore’s law and whether it can continue. In the process you will be looking at very large numbers and the effects of exponential growth on something we now live with all the time.
Interest
Which form of interest, simple or compound, is the fairest? If you were buying a house or a car which would you rather have, which would you consider fair? Or if you had your money in a bank account earning interest, which would you consider the fairest way to calculate that interest? We will show you how to calculate each and help you think about what is fair as far as interest is concerned.
Power Functions
Adding an exponent, sometimes referred to as a ‘power’, to the input variable of a linear function that passes through the origin creates a power function. Changing the parameters of these functions reveal some important and interesting patterns.
Square Numbers
The square numbers form an interesting pattern on the times (multiplication) table. They run along a diagonal from 1 to the top right of the table separating the table into two halves. This is the first step in looking at patterns in the multiplication table. Students build a new square number table by using a rule and then graph that the square numbers. The square numbers form a parabola on a graph.