Scientific Notation

Scientific notation is used to write very large or very small numbers.

Example: of a large number such as 4 5000 000 s, it is written in scientific notation as 4.5 x 10⁶ s.

A coefficient and a power of 10

The first part that is usually between 1 and 9.99 and the second part, which is power of 10 that can be anything.

• examples...
• * 454000 = 4.54 x 10⁵ moving the decimal 5 places to the left
• * 0165 = 1.65 x 10^-2 moving the decimal 2 places to the right.

• 1.5 = coefficient
• 10^{2 =} power of 10

1.28 x 10⁷ m

6.8 x 10¹ kg

3 x 10^-5 cm

to the left to give a positive power of 10

to the right to give a negative power of 10

The correct answer is 2) 8 x 10⁶ m

The correct answer is 1) 8.2 x 10⁴ g

The correct answer is 0.020 L

180 000 g