Revision of laws of indices and the use of logarithm tables

This lesson begins by revising the laws of indices — multiplication, division, power of a power, zero index, negative index, and fractional (root) index — since these form the conceptual bridge into logarithms (a logarithm is simply the index/power to which a base is raised to give a number).

Building on this, the lesson introduces students to reading 4-figure logarithm tables to find the logarithm of a number. Students learn that a logarithm has two parts:

• The characteristic (whole-number part), obtained by expressing the number in standard form and reading off the power of 10.

• The mantissa (decimal part), found by locating the number's first two digits in the table's row, its third digit in the column, and applying the mean-difference correction for the fourth digit.