what is scientific notation?

Answer 1

A way to write numbers (usualy big numbers)
Imagine number 480,000,000
It is 4,8 * 100,000,000
You can write it as 4,8*10^8 or simply 4,8E8
3 452 000 000= 3,452E9

It is very easy to multiply these numbers

Answer 2

Scientific notation is, essentially, a method for writing really big or really small numbers. It is called scientific notation because these huge numbers are often found in scientific work, like the size of an atom or the mass of the earth.

For example, you might have the number 6000000000000. That’s really big, right? Unfortunately, it isn’t easy to tell exactly how big at first glance with all those zeroes stuck on the end. Instead, the number could be written as 6 * 1000000000000. Then you can change the 1000000000000 to an easier to understand number: 10^12. Putting it all together, we have 6 * 10^12. Now you can compare that number to others, because the 10^12 means there are 12 zeroes at the end.

The value of scientific notation becomes clear when you try to multiply or divide these numbers. What is 50000000 * 3000000? You could do this relatively easily by multiplying 3 times 5 and then adding up all the zeroes, but that still takes time, and you could easily miscount all the zeroes. Instead, scientific notation allows us to multiply 5 * 10^7 times 3 *10^6. You multiply the 5 and the 3 to get 15, and then add the exponents on the 10’s. The answer is 15*10^13. However, in order for scientific notation to be completely correct, the number at the beginning must be between 1 and 10. The 15 has to be changed into 1.5, and to make up for this we multiply the whole thing by another factor of 10, giving 1.5*10^14.

Scientific notation can also be used for very small numbers in much the same way. 0.000005 is written as 5*10^-6, because you use negative exponents on the 10 when the number is very small. Remember, negative exponents do not make the number negative, but just very small. Try multiplying .00009 * .00003. The numbers in scientific notation are 9*10^-5 times 3*10^-5. The answer is computed the same way as before, yielding 27*10^-10, or 2.7*10^-9.

Answer 3

It's a method for easily writing numbers that are very large, or very small. It has the form A X 10^b, where A is called the "mantissa" and b is the "exponent." The easiest way to describe how it works is to give some examples. Consider the number, 3.5 billion, or 3,500,000,000. In scientific notation, this number is expressed as 3.5 X 10^9, which is 3.5 times ten to the ninth power. Now consider the number, 0.00000289. It can be expressed as 2.89 X 10^-6, ie, 2.89 times ten to the negative sixth power. Normally, in scientific notation, one just uses a few significant figures (like two to four). If you really need a whole lot of significant digits, you probably won't save any space using scientific notation, and you might as well write the number all the way out. Also, I should add that there's something called "engineering notation." It's just like scientific notation, except the power the ten is raised to is some multiple of 3 (or -3), eg, 10^6, 10^12, 10^-3, etc. The reason is that the common engineering units have prefixes that jump in increments of 3: eg, millimeter, nanometer, picofarad, kilogram, megahertz, gigabyte, etc. The convention of doing the same with the exponent makes it easy to recognize or convert units. For instance, you know right off that 35.6 X 10^6 Hz is 35.6 megahertz, 6.8 X 10^3 g is 6.8 kg, etc. And one more thing... When you see the letter "e," such as on a calculator, it means "10^," ie, that's the button you hit to use scientific notation. Thus, 5 X 10^-6 can be represented as 5e-6, etc.

Answer 4

You take a number and write so that it is a number 1 or greater, but less than 10, multiplied by 10 to a power. Basically, you move the decimal point so that there is one digit in front of it, and then add 10 to some power to the end to account for that change.

For example,
2,456,784,109,277 = 2.456784109277 * 10^12
2,338,109.628 = 2.338109628 * 10^6
0.003887209 = 3.887209 * 10^ -3

Answer 5

It is a way of showing big numbers as a small number multiplied by a power of ten.

For example suppose you have three million. Instead of writing 3,000,000 you could write 3 x ten to the 6th because ten to the sixth power is a million [10x10x10x10x10x10].

It is particularly good for very large numbers like 6 x 10 to the 23rd instead of writing 23 zeroes after the number 6.

Answer 6

Numbers that are written in the form of a power of 10 and coefficient of 1 or more, but less than 10 example 4.5*10^4

Answer 7

were learing this in my pre algebra class
this is when you take a number like 4,550,000,000,000,000 and you put it into terms like 4.55 times 10 to the power of 15
you do this because you move the decimal point over 15 places. the number resulting in this must be greater than 1 and less than 10. when you use this for decimals you do the same thing but you use ten to the power of a negative number.

Answer 8

It is an easier way to write very small or very large numbers.

Which would you prefer to write?

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 1 * 10^30
0.00000000000000000001 or 1 * 10^-20

It could really be a problem if you mis-counted the number of zeros!

Answer 9

scientific notation is a fancy way of saying "i don't want to write a bunch of zeros." Instead of writing one billion (1,000,000,000), you would write 1x10 to the power of 8. hope this helps.

Answer 10

For very larg or very small numbers, they are ffrequently givev in the form a.bc*10^n where n can be any integer.
Examples

6,130,000=6.13*10^6

.000425=4.25*10^-4