# How do you write 14.05 billion in scientific notation?

Apr 30, 2016

$1.405$ x ${10}^{10}$

#### Explanation:

"billion" is a number with nine zeros behind it

So, we can move the decimal point (for the given $14.05$ billion) to the right nine times to see the number fully written out as:

$14.05$ billion $=$ 14,050,000,000

In scientific notation, this number would be written in a more simplified form than writing out all those zeros in the following way:

14,050,000,000 $=$ $14.05$ x ${10}^{9}$ So this is the number of billions.

However, the rule for scientific form is that the number before the decimal point must be a non-zero number less than 10. In other words, there may only be one digit before the point.

The decimal point must be moved yet another place to the left to give $1.405 \times {10}^{10}$

$10$ x $10$ x $10$ x $10$ x $10$ x $10$ x $10$ x $10$ x $10$ $=$ 1,000,000,000

or $1$ billion

Multiplying, $1$ billion "times" $14.05$ gives us $14.05$ billion

or 14,050,000,000