can someone please explain the scientific notation?

Question

like how many spaces to move the decimal and stuff? with examples? thanks soooo much!

Answer 1

One basic that will be helpful to keep in mind is that scientific notation is nothing but a convenient way to write large numbers. It has no other meaning, though it has a few conveniences as a sort of bonus.

Consider the number 6,256,000,000. Since writing numbers of this sort over and over again would get tiresome, someone way back when came up with the idea of a kind of short hand. It's pretty simple. start by writing 6.256 (that's easy enough) Now you need a way of differentiating between the first number I wrote and the second. So count how many places I moved the decimal point. Turns out it's nine. So we have 6.256 x 10(uppercase9)

Do you see it? I took that large number we started with and wrote it in a smaller, easier way and then I added a "notation" telling myself in what manner I converted the number so that I would know how to convert it back when needed.

I don't know if I've really made things clear to you , but I hope it helps.

Answer 2

Hi,
Numbers expressed with scientific notation have one significant digit to the left of the decimal point. So, to convert a decimal to scientific notation do this:
1) Move the decimal point to the right until you have one digit to the left of the decimal.
Example: 0.0128 Move the decimal to make the number 1.28

2) The number has gotten larger, so we must multiply it by an exponent to bring it back to its original value. So, count the number of places you moved the decimal and make that a negative power of 10. We moved it 2 places
1.28 x 10^(-2).


Suppose that we want to make write a number 10 or larger in scientific notation. We move the decimal to the left.
Let's take the number 128, and we move the decimal so that we have:
1.28
So, we moved the decimal 2 places to the left, and since the number has gotten smaller we must multiply it by a positive exponential to bring it back to it's original value. That is, of course, 10^2
So, we have:
1.28 x10^2 for scientific notation.

Hope this helps.
FE

Answer 3

there is what we call significant figures, like for 1000, there are 4 significant figures whereas for 00010 there are only 2 (0's before 1 are not significant). If you want to express the answer in scientific notation, remember first that the move from left to right is negative exponent while from right to left is positive exponent. (You may also want to consider how many significant figure is asked).
Always write: __ x 10^exponent

Example:

120523 = 1.20523 x 10^5
0.253658 = 253658 x 10^-6
10 = 1 x 10^1
0.10 = 10 x 10^-2

Hope these examples will help!