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Broken Calculator

Teachers' Notes

Press the "C" key before starting a new calculation
Press F5 or "Refresh" to start again
Click here to open activity in new window (The press F11 to hide tool bars)

This is an LTR (Left to right) calculator.

Other broken calculators:
BIDMAS 1 and 5 - 2 and 3 - 3 and 4 - 4 and 5 - 5 and 2
Left To Right (LTR): 2 and 3 - 3 and 4 - 4 and 5

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Keywords: Starter | Arithmetic

  • David Payne, St Anne's Catholic School, Southampton
  • Tuesday, June 16, 2009
  • "Thanks for some great resources which stimulate lots of ideas.
    Could you produce a calculator activity that includes the use of brackets, powers, squaring etc to encourage students to make use of functions on a scientific calculator?"
  • CCh,
  • Wednesday, May 05, 2010
  • "A good resource but it is a shame it doesn't obey the rules of BIDMAS. Having spent a long time talking about BIDMAS in previous weeks the solution 5 x 5 - 4 x 4 was offered for 9. Unfortunately the calculator gave 64.
    It did provoke a discussion but I allowed the answer 9!"
  • N Cox, Ipswich
  • Thursday, May 06, 2010
  • "A great idea but ruined for me by not following the BiDMAS rules. It thus allows incorrect answers and confuses pupils who get the right answer (e.g a student doing 55 - 4x5 - 4x5 for 15 and seeing an "answer" of over a thousand!)."
  • M Page, Hull
  • Thursday, May 06, 2010
  • "Agree with the other comments. A good exercise, only spoiled by the calculator not knowing BODMAS!"
  • Transum,
  • Sunday, April 03, 2011
  • "Thanks for your feedback. A link has now been added to a similar activity using a BIDMAS calculator."
  •  

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This starter has scored a mean of 3.9 out of 5 based on 86 votes.

 

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Answers

Here is one set of answers but there are many more!

Broken Calculator Answers

Computer Teacher, do your students have access to computers?
Do you have "Laptops in Lessons"?

Whether your students each have a TabletPC or share a desktop PC, this activity lends itself to eLearning (Engaged Learning).

Laptop

Here is the URL which will take them to a concise version of this page.

Transum.org/go/?Start=May5

Here's the URL which will take
them to a student version of this activity.

www.transum.org/go/?to=Calc45

 

 



 

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