a class is given this question on a text about exponents: A squirrel collects 11 nuts an hour for 12 hours on 12 days. write an expression with and without exponents to find how many nuts the squirrel collected. Two students provided these answers student A 12^3 12•3 36 nuts student B 12^3 12• 12 • 12 1,728 nuts which student is correct? explain what the incorrect student did incorrectly.

Answer 1

Student A is correct. The expression 12^3 represents 12 raised to the power of 3, which means multiplying 12 by itself three times. In this case, it represents multiplying 12 (the number of hours) by itself three times (for the three days). So the expression 12^3 represents the correct calculation to find how many nuts the squirrel collected.

Student B is incorrect. Their expression 12^3 12• 12 • 12 represents multiplying 12 by itself three times, and then multiplying the result by 12 three more times. However, this calculation does not match the given information in the problem. The squirrel collected 11 nuts an hour for 12 hours, so the number of nuts collected in one day would be 11 × 12 = 132 nuts. Since the squirrel collected nuts for 12 days, the correct expression would be 132 × 12 = 1,584 nuts.

Therefore, student B's answer of 1,728 nuts is incorrect because they multiplied the number of hours (12) by 12 three times, which is not accurate based on the given information in the problem.