The length of a micrometer is approximately 0.00003937 inch. How would you express this in scientific notation?

1 Answer
Mar 13, 2018

#3.937*10^-5#

Explanation:

The decimal point is moved 5 places to the right, so #10^-5#.
This means 1/10,000’ or 0.00001.

Notice that, if you put a zero before the decimal in the original number, the raised power is the number of zeroes before the non-zero digits.

Scientific notation is always stated as a digit, then the decimal, then the rest of the digits, then the raised power.