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These resources have been reviewed and selected by STEM Learning’s team of education specialists for factual accuracy and relevance to teaching STEM subjects in UK schools.

Giantburgers

This task is designed to assess how well students understand calculating in scientific notation.

The task is set in the context of a newspaper headline that claims: ‘Everyday 7% of Americans eat at a Giantburger restaurant.’

The following information is presented:

• There are about 8 x 103 Giantburger restaurants in America
• Each restaurant serves about 2.5 x 103 people every day
• There are about 3 x 108 Americans

Students must use the information to determine if the headline is correct.

This task is from the Mathematics Assessment Resource Service, a collaboration between UC Berkeley and the Shell Centre team at the University of Nottingham. A full rubric is given for the task, together with examples of student work and suggestions for helping students overcome misconceptions. Further information on the collection is given here.

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