Exploring exponents

We looked at exponents today, and built models using toothpicks.

We looked at the effect of the brackets, and the coefficients

We also looked at what squared and cubed mean.

We noticed that within this big cube, with side length 2x, we can fit 8 little cubes with side length x.  We can expand the expression (2x)^3 to be (2x)(2x)(2x) which is 8x^3.