Unit 10

Exponents & Polynomials

Exponent rules, scientific notation, polynomial operations, FOIL/area model

This unit is about building expressions up: taking small pieces and putting them together into bigger ones. It's the toolkit the rest of the course leans on, and most of it grows from one simple idea you'll meet on the first page.

What helps to have fresh: a little comfort multiplying a number by itself, and the patience to handle a minus sign carefully. That's plenty. Everything else, we'll build here from scratch.

This unit points in one direction: building expressions up. You'll learn to multiply things out, to take (x + 2)(x + 3) and turn it into x² + 5x + 6. The very next unit runs the same machinery backward, so the work you put in here pays off twice.

Before each new lesson, redo two or three problems from a lesson or two earlier from memory. That small warm-up keeps the older moves sharp while the new ones land.