Extended notation is good for what??

Question

Where would you use this in life??
Has ANYone EVER had to use it after graduating?
What types of jobs or situations would require use of extended notation-- or is this just an excercise for the brain?
Who knows???????

aka....scientific notation....thanks dablaze

doug donaghue.......I don't need sarcasm-- just answers. How do you expect ANYONE to know ANYTHING if they never learned it before??

There was a time when not even YOU knew an answer to this question.
I do appreciate the beginning of your answer...but the end?...I'm sending that part back to you.I don't need it. Thanks ;)

"Ask a stupid question and you're an idiot for a minute---- never ask and you're an idiot for life."
Chinese Proverb

Answer 1

Chemistry : milligrams, micromoles, femtoliters,Avogogros number 6.023x10^23 molecules/mole
Physics: milliamps, microvolts, picofarads, 6.02x10^18 electrons/amp
Astronomy: intergalactic distances
Biology: diameter of RBC in micrometers, hemoglobin concentration in picograms.
But if you're an English or History major, or a fast-food order taker, you probably won't need to know it.
I've used all of these at one time or another since graduating University in 1975.

Answer 2

I use it every day. I do spread sheet work on probabilities. I count combinations of things that go into the trillions and you just don't write those numbers out.

In the past, I used scientific notation in the lab until I wrote computer programs to convert the raw data into results.

Just read the story problems in your text book. Most books use real world problems whenever possible.

Some examples of numbers that are always written in scientific notation include:
Avagodro's Number
The universal gravitation constant
The speed of light
Wavelengths of visible light

And, it is done because it is a lot easier than doing it without scientific notation.

Please believe me, it is one of those things that somebody who needed it came up with and it gets used a lot by scientists, engineers, and applied mathematicians.

The reason they are making you learn it is that they don't know if you might need it or not.

Answer 3

If you are referring to scientific notation, i.e., expressing numbers in terms of powers of ten, this type of notation system is used in all sciences (try to find a calculator without it) and the business world.

This is no big brained item. For example, rather than saying the Earth's mass is about
5,980,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg,
we can say the Earth's mass is about 5.98 x 10^24 kg.

These "short hand/less ink" numbers are easier to keep track of than trying to count out zeroes. Another example, rather than writing out a google as,

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000

We can just do the scientific notation by writing
1x10^100, which means a one followed by a hundred zeroes.

I see upon reviewing this post, even the software on this site won't let me "long hand" the above large numbers :)

Answer 4

Well, for example , in my country they are now cutting down 4 zeros of the money, for example, a banknote that used to have written 10,000 on it, now has 1 written on it.

Right now we are going through a transitory period, and both banknotes (those with 10,000 and those with 1) are used and the prices are also written in both the old money and in the new money.....but not everywhere. Some just show the prices in the new money.

If you are used to evaluate your shopping in the old money, you can use a scientific calculator (like I have) and write for example 1 EXP 4.....and it will automatically transform it to 10,000

You might think it is easy to transform 1 to 10,000, but when you go to the supermarket and you get prices like:
1.14......19.99....4.58......469.89.....and so on
and you want to buy more products, but you don't know if you have the money for everything, ....you can just add them on your calculator, and than press EXP 4.....and there you go....

I am an engineer and I have to work with numbers that are extremely big or extremely small....so it is easier for me to wright the number using extended notation than writing lots of zeros.

Answer 5

You mean like scientific notation? 3.08 x 10 to the nth power?

Well, you could use it if you went into the sciences or engineering after college. Or if you encountered something vaguely scientific in life, then you'd know what they were talking about.

It's just one of of those random skills you may not use very often, but it's part of being an educated citizen of the 21st century. Suck it up. :)

Answer 6

I use it pretty much daily.

And 'engineering notation' (in which the exponent is always a multiple of three) is used in pretty much *all* of the technical fields.

OTOH, maybe there really *is* a career waiting for you at Micky D's


Doug