Available online
Description
Mathematics is an essential tool in any quantitative studies, even in the Biological Sciences, and yet its an area most frequently feared by students. The programme illustrates this by starting wit...h an extract from a third level ecology programme and some interviews with students at a science summer school. The main part of the programme illustrates some ideas about numbers - positive and negative numbers, decimal numbers and powers of ten. The addition and subtraction of positive and negative numbers is illustrated with a dice throwing game played by the presenters Mike Pentz and Allan Solomon. After a brief reminder that the decimal notation for writing pounds and pence canbe generalised and extended for very large or very small numbers a more convenient way of writing such numbers is investigated using powers of ten. The number of water molecules in a bucket can then be written succintly as 1026 rather than a 1 followed by 26 noughts, and negative powers of 10 can be used for representing very small numbers. The programme is linked to printed teaching material containing more eamples of manipulating numbers of all kinds.
Mathematics is an essential tool in any quantitative studies, even in the Biological Sciences, and yet its an area most frequently feared by students. The programme illustrates this by starting wit...h an extract from a third level ecology programme and some interviews with students at a science summer school. The main part of the programme illustrates some ideas about numbers - positive and negative numbers, decimal numbers and powers of ten. The addition and subtraction of positive and negative numbers is illustrated with a dice throwing game played by the presenters Mike Pentz and Allan Solomon. After a brief reminder that the decimal notation for writing pounds and pence canbe generalised and extended for very large or very small numbers a more convenient way of writing such numbers is investigated using powers of ten. The number of water molecules in a bucket can then be written succintly as 1026 rather than a 1 followed by 26 noughts, and negative powers of 10 can be used for representing very small numbers. The programme is linked to printed teaching material containing more eamples of manipulating numbers of all kinds.
| Module code and title: | S101, Science: a foundation course |
|---|---|
| Item code: | S101; MAFS1; 1978 |
| First transmission date: | 29-10-1978 |
| Published: | 1978 |
| Rights Statement: | |
| Restrictions on use: | |
| Duration: | 00:15:00 |
| + Show more... | |
| Publisher: | BBC Open University |
| Keyword(s): | MAFS; Negative numbers; Positive numbers; Powers of ten |
| Subject terms: | Decimal system |
| Master spool number: | 6HT72963 |
| Production number: | 00525_1364 |
| Videofinder number: | 2832 |
| Available to public: | no |
