🚀 go-pugleaf

Paul,

When you say that some of your students have trouble with small numbers
and with big numbers, what do you mean by trouble?  I have trouble
getting a feel for really large distance measurements, but I feel fairly
comfortable with Avogadro's number -- which is pretty big.  I think that
this is because I have a picture in my head of 22.4 liters of a gas at
STP which is equivalent to 6.02 x 10^23 molecules.  To enhance my
internal picture of a mole, I have calculated the size of a room needed
to hold Avogadro's number of ping pong balls.  However, a distance of
10^23 m is beyond my comprehension.  I can't fathom it.  It's almost as
if anything farther than a few light years is filed away in memory
location labeled "really far away."  The odd thing is that really small
distances (i.e. nucleus diameters) are easier for me get a handle on.
I seem to have pictures in my head of the proportions of things
like the comparison between nucleus diameter and atomic diameter.

Anyway -- to make a long story short -- oops too late
Is this the kind of thing to which you allude or were you
referring to other problems?

Cherie                                 Cherie Lehman
clehman@purccvm.bitnet                 West Lafayette High School
clehman@vm.cc.purdue.edu               West Lafayette  IN  47906
:)                                     317-743-9502