Students explore the basics of DC circuits, analyzing the light from light bulbs when connected in series and parallel circuits. Ohm's law and the equation for power dissipated by a circuit are the two primary equations used to explore circuits connected in series and parallel. Students measure and see the effect of power dissipation from the light bulbs. Kirchhoff's voltage law is used to show how two resistor elements add in series, while Kirchhoff's current law is used to explain how two resistor elements add when in parallel. Students also learn how electrical engineers apply this knowledge to solve problems. Power dissipation is particularly important with the introduction of LED bulbs and claims of energy efficiency, and understanding how power dissipation is calculated helps when evaluating these types of claims. This activity is designed to introduce students to the concepts needed to understand how circuits can be reduced algebraically.

The purpose of this task is to give students practice in reading, analyzing, and constructing algebraic expressions, attending to the relationship between the form of an expression and the context from which it arises. The context here is intentionally thin; the point is not to provide a practical application to kitchen floors, but to give a framework that imbues the expressions with an external meaning.

This lesson unit is intended to help you assess how well students are able to manipulate and calculate with polynomials. In particular, it aims to identify and help students who have difficulties in: switching between visual and algebraic representations of polynomial expressions; and performing arithmetic operations on algebraic representations of polynomials, factorizing and expanding appropriately when it helps to make the operations easier.

This task assumes students are familiar with mixing problems. This approach brings out different issues than simply asking students to solve a mixing problem, which they can often set up using patterns rather than thinking about the meaning of each part of the equations.

The problem deals with a rational expression which is built up from operations arising naturally in a context: adding the volumes of the fertilizer and the water, and dividing the volume of the fertilizer by the resulting sum. Thus it encourages students to see the expression as having meaning in terms of numbers and operations, rather than as an abstract arrangement of symbols.

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students understand conditional probability, and, in particular, to help teachers identify and assist students who have the following difficulties: representing events as a subset of a sample space using tables and tree diagrams; and understanding when conditional probabilities are equal for particular and general situations.

This task requires students to answer questions about the structure of an expression.

This question provides students with an opportunity to see expressions as constructed out of a sequence of operations: first taking the square root of n, then dividing the result of that operation into s. Students studying statistics encounter the expression in this question as the standard deviation of a sampling distribution with samples of size n when the distribution from which the sample is taken has standard deviation s.

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to translate between graphs and algebraic representations of polynomials. In particular, this unit aims to help you identify and assist students who have difficulties in: recognizing the connection between the zeros of polynomials when suitable factorizations are available, and graphs of the functions defined by polynomials; and recognizing the connection between transformations of the graphs and transformations of the functions obtained by replacing f(x) by f(x + k), f(x) + k, -f(x), f(-x).

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to solve problems involving area and arc length of a sector of a circle using radians. It assumes familiarity with radians and should not be treated as an introduction to the topic. This lesson is intended to help teachers identify and assist students who have difficulties in: Computing perimeters, areas, and arc lengths of sectors using formulas and finding the relationships between arc lengths, and areas of sectors after scaling.

The purpose of this task is to identify the structure in the two algebraic expressions by interpreting them in terms of a geometric context. Students will have likely seen this type of process before, so the principal source of challenge in this task is to encourage a multitude and variety of approaches, both in terms of the geometric argument and in terms of the algebraic manipulation.

This lesson unit is intended to help teachers assess how well students are able to: recognize the differences between equations and identities; substitute numbers into algebraic statements in order to test their validity in special cases; resist common errors when manipulating expressions such as 2(x Đ 3) = 2x Đ 3; (x + 3)_ = x_ + 3_; and carry out correct algebraic manipulations. It also aims to encourage discussion on some common misconceptions about algebra.

This task illustrates A-SSE.1a because it requires students to identify expressions as sums or products and interpret each summand or factor.

Through a series of activities, students discover that the concept of mechanical advantage describes reality fairly well. They act as engineers creating a design for a ramp at a construction site by measuring four different inclined planes and calculating the ideal mechanical advantage versus the actual mechanical advantage of each. Then, they use their analysis to make recommendations for the construction site.

This resource is geared for teacher use. It is loosely linked to the Secondary Math II, Mathematics Vision Project curriculum.