Question

How do you express the product of 3.3 cm an 7.00 cm using the correct number of significant digits?

Answer 1

`"23 cm"^2`

Explanation:

The thing to keep in mind here is that when you're dealing with multiplication or division, the result must have the same number of significant figures as the least precise measurement.

In this case, you have

`"3.3 cm " ->` two non-zero digits, two sig figs

`"7.00 cm " ->` one non-zero digit, two significant zeros, three sig figs

This means that if you multiply these two measurements, the result must have two sig figs since that is the number of sig figs you have for the least precise measurement.

So, you will have

`"3.3 cm" xx "7.00 cm" = "23.10 cm"^2`

The answer must be rounded to two sig figs, which means that you'll have

`color(green)(bar(ul(|color(white)(a/a)color(black)("3.3 cm" xx "7.00 cm" = "23 cm"^3)color(white)(a/a)|)))`