Week 5

Drawing of a Mobius strip by MC Escher

Students are forging ahead with Al-Jabr this week! We are planning to squeeze in some work with 'grouping symbols' (ie brackets) and learn how to e-x-p-a-n-d an al-jabr expression:

Example: expand 2 x (m + n) - Solution: simple! everything inside the brackets is multiplied by 2, so we get 2 x m + 2 x n = 2m + 2n

And then we will reverse the process, and become confident in taking out common parts of expressions (aka 'factorisation')

Example: factorise 24 + 6q Solution: find something that divides into both parts - in this case '6' - and take it outside some brackets. This leaves two 'factors' : 6 x (4 + p) - which is the reverse of how we expanded an expression above.

Click here for the next Hammer Maths Assignment
which is due Tue March 13th (first Tuesday after Nimboyda)