Scientific Notation
Intro to Algebra
Scientific Notation
Scientific Notation is a special way of writing numbers:
It makes it easy to use big and small values.
How it works….
• Remember what we did yesterday….
• We multiplied by a base of 10
• All that did was move the decimal point,
which is what we want to do
• The x 10 to a power part just moves the
decimal place to where it should be
How?
1. Write all the digits in the number
2. Place the decimal point after the first
digit
3. Then write x 10 to a power that puts
the decimal point where it should be
Example
How do I determine the exponent that
I use?
• If the decimal point moves to the right, is the
number getting bigger or smaller?
• If we want the decimal point to move to the right,
will our exponent be positive or negative?
• Yesterday we divided by a base of 10 to move the
decimal point to the left. How do we move it to the
left when we are multiplying by a base of 10?
• What tells us to move right or left?
• What tells us how much to move?
Writing our Exponent
• If we need to move the decimal point to
the right, the exponent should be
positive.
• If we need to move the decimal point to
the left, the exponent should be
negative.
• The number tells you how many places
you need to move it.
11
Write 3.56 × 10 as an
ordinary number.
−14
Write 7.085 × 10
as an
ordinary number.
The speed of light in a vacuum is
299,792,458 m/s. What is this
written in Scientific notation?
The mass of the Moon is
73,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
kg. What is this written in
Scientific notation?
The rest mass of an electron is
0.000000000000000000000000000000910938
kg. What is this written in
Scientific notation?
The length of an electronic
component is 0.001265 mm.
Write this in Scientific notation.
The radius of the sun is 695,500
km. Write this in Scientific
notation.