Question 11

Question 11 The average distance from Jupiter to the Sun is about 5 x 108 miles. The average distance from Venus to the Sun is about 7 x 107 miles. The average distance from Jupiter to the Sun is about how many times as great as the average distance from Venus to the Sun? Students can use calculators for this one. The students are looking for the value of how many times the distance is greater. A common mistake for this problem is that the students subtract the two values, instead of divide them. There will be two ways to showcase how to do this, in case the students get confused and forget the rules  7 times

Question 11 Cont 5 x 108 7 x 107 5 x 108 7 x 107 50 x 107 7 x 107 500000000 70000000 7.14285 50 7 The first way to do the problem is to line up the numbers like you are going to divide them, since that is what the problem is asking for you to do. In order to divide numbers in scientific notation, the exponents on the power of 10 needs to be the same. Since they are not, you need to make them the same. You can drop down a power and add a 0 to the 5, making it 50 x 107. Then, since both of the powers of 10 are the same, they cancel each other out and you can just divide 50 by 7, getting 7.143, which I rounded to 7. The other way to do this problem is to draw out 5 x 108 and include all of the zeros on that. So, that will be 5 with 8 zeros after it. 7 x 107 will be a 7 with 7 zeros after it. You can then start crossing out the zeros, since they would cancel each other out when dividing. You will then be left with 50/7, which gives you the same answer as the other way: 7.143 There are still some other ways, and you could ask the students to share what they did if they did something different. 7.143