Scientific Notation

When we work with big, immeasurable digits, whether rational or irrational numbers, understanding the mathematical problem becomes too hard the solution can come up as impossible. Because of the brilliant brains who created it, working with very large or tiny numbers is much less of a challenge in the scientific and engineering fields using Scientific Notation.

What is Scientific notation ?

Scientific notation is a method of expressing numbers that are too large or too small to be conveniently written in decimal form. It is often used in science, engineering, and mathematics to make calculations with very large or very small numbers more manageable

Scientific Notation Rules

• The base should be always 10
• The exponent must be a non-zero integer, that means it can be either positive or negative
• The absolute value of the coefficient is greater than or equal to 1 but it should be less than 10
•  Coefficients can be positive or negative numbers including whole and decimal numbers
• The mantissa carries the rest of the significant digits of the number

The general representation of scientific notation is:

Scientific Notation Examples

The examples of scientific notation are:
590000000 = 5.9×10⁸
7230000000 = 7.23×10⁹
90500000 = 9.05 x 10⁷
0.000000047 = 4.7 x 10^-8
0.0000315 = 3.15 x 10^-5

Positive and Negative Exponent

Scientific notation with positive and negative exponents is a versatile way to express a wide range of numbers, from very large to very small. Here’s how these exponents function within the context of scientific notation:

Positive Exponents

In scientific notation, a positive exponent indicates a number greater than 1. The exponent tells us how many times to multiply the number by ten. For example:

• 3.2×10³ represents 3.2 multiplied by 10 three times, or 3200
• 1.5×10⁵ means 1.5 multiplied by 10 five times, resulting in 150000.

These are typically used to represent large numbers such as distances in astronomy, large amounts of data in bytes, or other significant quantities.

Negative Exponents

Conversely, a negative exponent signifies a number less than 1. This exponent denotes how many times the number is divided by ten. For instance:

• 4.7×10−² equals 4.7divided by 100, or 0.047
• 6.3×10⁻⁴ translates to 6.3 divided by 10,000 resulting in 0.00063

Negative exponents are common when dealing with microscopic scales, such as the sizes of

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How to do Scientific Notation

When positive real numbers are multiplied by a power of 10, the result is expressed in scientific notation. Here’s how to do it step by step.

Step 1: Figure out the power of 10

When calculating numbers through multiplication or division using scientific notation, we must keep in mind the rules for standard forms of exponents since they are a component of the number (10 raised to a power). Consider this: “How many places can I move the decimal point?” to determine the power of 10.

Step 2: Move the decimal point

To get a number between 1 and 10 (including fractions), move the decimal point. In other words, you should place your decimal after the first non-zero integer.

Step 3: Count the number of decimal places moved in Step 1

The count is positive if the decimal point was shifted to the left. The count becomes negative if the decimal point is shifted to the right.

Step 4: Check the number

After changing the number to Scientific Notation, just make sure the “digits” component is between 1 and 10. It may be 1, but never 10.

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