Introduction

Exciting computer animation and on-site interviews with professionals who use algebra in their daily work enhance this award-winning LPB-produced series that helps students turn mathematical stumbling blocks into building blocks for the future.

The series, which won a Gold Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as a Bronze Apple in the 1989 National Educational Film and Video Festival, introduces viewers to important algebra concepts such as positive and negative numbers, exponents, basic properties, order of operations and inverse operations.

Each fifteen-minute episode of The Power of Algebra takes viewers on field trips to different locations where algebra is important to day-to-day operations. Among the places visited are a GMC truck plant, NASA/Martin Marietta in New Orleans, a clinical research center and the Louisiana Air National Guard base. Professionals at each location explain the importance of the algebraic concept being studied as it applies to their jobs.