What is the order of magnitude of 1000?

1 Answer
Sep 6, 2014

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#.