Chapter 5: Exponents and Polynomials

#1017, The Bose Speaker - "You can never do anything better unless it is different," according to Dr. Amar Bose, who uses the rules of mathematics to achieve superior sound quality in his Bose radio and speakers.

Ask students if they can explain the meaning of the word "amplify", and discuss to agreement that it means "to make greater", and that's why a device that makes sound louder is called an amplifier.

Explain that amplifiers can multiply the strength of an electronic signal, and therefore the volume of the sound that it carries, by a factor of 10, 100, 1000, or even 10,000 or 100,000, and that engineers who work with amplifiers write these numbers in a form called "scientific notation" (so they don't have to write so many zeros). To assess prior knowledge, Ask students to work in pairs to determine what an amplification of 5.2 x 10³ would mean. For students who can do this easily, ask them to determine the total amplification of two amplifiers operating in tandem, one with an amplification of 4 x 10³, the other with an amplification of 6 x 10². (You may wish to tell these students that amplifiers work by multiplying the strength of the signals, and therefore they would have to multiply these two numbers to get the total amplification.)

Tell students that they will learn more about how to work with these kinds of numbers in this chapter.