Misunderstanding zero. Some students find it difficult to assess whether the presence of
zero impacts upon the value of the decimal. 0.45 will appear the same as 0.045: once
students ignore the zero both decimals appear to be 0.45. On the other hand some students
regard equivalent decimals such as 0.40 and .4 to be different values (Hiebert, 1983). A
further misconception over zero is in multiplying by 10; students simply added a 0 to the
end of the decimal (Hiebert, 1983). Thus 2.65 multiplied by 10 would become 2.650.