Question

What is 12,000 in a scientific notation?

Answer 1

`1.2000 * 10^4`

Explanation:

`1 < 1.2 < 10`

Answer 2

`1.2 * 10^4`

Explanation:

There are two parts to scientific notation:

the actual decimal is 1.2 because in scientific notation, it needs to be between 1 and 10. So 0.12 is less than 1, and 12 is more than 10, but 1.2 is in between.

The power that 10 is raised to is 4 because that's the number of spaces left you had to move the decimal over to get 1.2.

Note: if you had to move the decimal right to get a number between 1-10, the exponent wold be negative.
Ex: `0.00036 = 3.6 * 10^-4`