What is an example of a scientific notation?

1 Answer
Mar 25, 2015

Numbers in scientific notation look like
#1.234*10^6# or #1.234*10^-6#

As you may know
#10^6=1000000# = one million and
#10^-6=0.000001# = one millionth
so the two examples above would be:
#1234000# and #0.000001234#

Scientific notation is used when really great or really small numbers are involved. In stead of writing out all these zeroes, when you can easily make a mistake in counting.
You wouldn't want to write out the number of molecules in a mole:
#N=6.02*10^23#, or would you?

The rule is that (in almost all cases, except sometimes in tables ) the #10^"power"# is chosen so that the number before the power turns out to be between #1# and #9.99...#
So you wouldn't write the first example as #1234*10^3#