Lesson 2 Powers of 10

    • Let’s use exponents to show powers of 10.

Warm-up Introduce How Many Do You See: Starburst

How many do you see? How do you see them?

image resembling a snowflake. From center, 10 spokes. 10 additional spokes off of each of the first spoke. 10 additional spokes off of each of the second spokes.  

Activity 1 Population of Delaware and India

Problem 1

About 1,000,000 people live in Delaware.

  1. How do you say this number?

  2. How many thousands is this? Explain or show your reasoning.

  3. Write the number using powers of 10.

  4. How many times would you need to extend the diagram from the warm-up to get 1,000,000 tiny segments? Explain or show your reasoning.

Problem 2

In 1997, the population of India was about 1,000,000,000.

  1. How would you say this number?

  2. How many millions is this? How many thousands is it? Explain or show your reasoning.

  3. Write the number using powers of 10.

  4. How many times would you need to extend the diagram from the warm-up to get 1,000,000,000 tiny segments? Explain or show your reasoning.

Activity 2 Powers of 10

Problem 1

Find the missing number that makes each equation true. Show your reasoning.

Problem 2

How were products of 10s useful in solving these problems?

Problem 3

Write each power of 10 as a number.

Activity 3 Beyond a Billion

  1. How would you say the number 1,000,000,000,000?

  2. How many billions is that? How many millions is it? Explain or show your reasoning.

  3. Write the number using powers of 10.

  4. Describe an example of something that there are 1,000,000,000,000 of in the world.

Practice Problem

Problem 1

Write each number using exponential notation.

  1. 100,000

  2. 1,000,000,000