Basic Operations Topics

Natural Numbers (a.k.a. Counting Numbers)Thinking of natural numbers, we can transport ourselves back to simpler times. The good ol' days when our only responsibility was to show up for kindergarte...

In a weird way, numbers are like chameleons: they change with their location. Depending on its location, a number can mean hundreds, even millions, or just tenths of one. This is the magic of place...

Translating spoken-word phrases into algebraic expressions is the start to an awesome session of puzzle-solving. It's like setting up all the pieces before playing a game.Writing algebraic expressi...

The order in which we complete a mathematical equation or expression is super important. Doing the steps of a problem out of order can lead to a totally different answer, even if we do the cal...

In life, a picture is worth a thousand texts, a good shortcut is worth extra time on Minecraft, and an outline can clarify any project. In math, we tend to spend lots of time reducing, simplifying,...

Commutative PropertyExtra! Extra! Math police give rule on "order" in addition or multiplication!It's front-page news. The math police have determined that the order of the numbers in an addition o...

Prime factorization is the process of breaking down a number into its prime factors.Say what?Okay, let's break that statement down:Prime number: a number that's only divisible by 1 and itself. 3...

Least Common Multiple (LCM) The Least Common Multiple, or LCM, of two or more numbers is the smallest number other than zero that's a multiple of each number. In other words, the LCM is the smal...

The absolute value of a number is the number's distance from zero on a number line.  Since we never talk about distance as being negative, the absolute value of a number is always positiv...

Like we saw earlier, integers is just a fancy name for whole numbers (0, 1, 2, 3,…) and their opposites (-1, -2, -3,…). On the number line, negative numbers are found to the left of zero (...

Here's the secret to adding integers: one positive and one negative added together cancel each other out.  Think about it like this: if you bonk your sister on the head (a negative), t...

Subtraction is the opposite of addition. Here's a little mantra to help us remember how it works when we're dealing with integers:subtracting a positive = adding a negativesubtracting a negative =...

You've made it past addition and subtraction. Guess what's next? It's time to learn the ropes of multiplying and dividing integers. The rules for multiplication and division are exactly the s...

As young math whipper-snappers, we added five 4s like this: 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4Then we learned a shorter way to write it, like this: 4 × 5Repeated addition can be written as multiplication. Now that...

Roots are sort of like the opposites of powers. The square root of 9, written as , means "what number times itself gives an answer of 9?"  32, or 3 to the second power (3 × 3)
...

A burst of energy created from two black holes smashing into each other 1.3 × 109 years ago was recently detected as gravitational waves. Uh, wait...exactly how long ago was that? The number 1....