The traditional explanations of logarithms I've encountered are far too math and terminology heavy for most people to grasp.
Think of a number line.... show example..... 1..2..3..4..5.. etc
Any given move to the right, makes the value go up by 1.
But... What if we did a special number line where each time it doubled instead of adding one? 1..2..4..8..16, etc...
That line would go up way to fast to see numbers like 10, so we can expand it out a bit...show that... and start to fill in the numbers... 2^10 (1024) is almost 1000... so you can divide that distance by 3 to get 10 on the line, then move one unit left for 5... and build out a slide ruler.
Computing logarithms with a 4 function calculator isn't hard by the way, I used to do it for fun on my lunch breaks.
Think of a number line.... show example..... 1..2..3..4..5.. etc
Any given move to the right, makes the value go up by 1.
But... What if we did a special number line where each time it doubled instead of adding one? 1..2..4..8..16, etc...
That line would go up way to fast to see numbers like 10, so we can expand it out a bit...show that... and start to fill in the numbers... 2^10 (1024) is almost 1000... so you can divide that distance by 3 to get 10 on the line, then move one unit left for 5... and build out a slide ruler.
Computing logarithms with a 4 function calculator isn't hard by the way, I used to do it for fun on my lunch breaks.