Question

What is the order of magnitude of 1000?

Answer 1

The answer is 3.

Because we use the decimal system, we use `10` as the base for the order of magnitude. There are 3 ways to solve this.

The first (easiest) way to to move the decimal point to the right of the most significant digit, in this case, the `1`. If you are moving the decimal point left, the order of magnitude is positive; if moving right, the order of magnitude is negative.

The second way is to take `log_(10)`, or simply `log` of the number, so `log 1000=3`.

The third way is to convert the number into scientific notation. The order of magnitude is the power used. So for a different example: `836824=8.36824xx10^5`. The order of magnitude is `5`.