# Lessons from teaching gifted elementary school students (Part 6a)

Every so often, I’ll informally teach a class of gifted elementary-school students. I greatly enjoy interacting with them, and I especially enjoy the questions they pose. Often these children pose questions that no one else will think about, and answering these questions requires a surprising depth of mathematical knowledge.

Here’s a question I once received:

255/256 to what power is equal to 1/2? And please don’t use a calculator.

Answering this question is pretty straightforward using algebra:

$\displaystyle \left( \frac{255}{256} \right)^x = \displaystyle \frac{1}{2}$.

$\displaystyle x \ln \frac{255}{256} = \ln \displaystyle \frac{1}{2}$

$x \displaystyle \frac{ \displaystyle \ln \frac{1}{2} }{\ln \displaystyle \frac{255}{256}}$

However, doing this without a calculator — and thus maintaining my image in front of these elementary school students — is a little formidable.

I’ll reveal how I did this — getting the answer correct to the nearest integer — in tomorrow’s post. In the meantime, I’ll leave a thought bubble if you’d like to think about it on your own.

## One thought on “Lessons from teaching gifted elementary school students (Part 6a)”

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.