+1006 Scientific Notation is a style of equation where a number that is too big to be practical (i.e. a number that has many zeros after it) is shifted around until it is between 1 and 10.
For example, a number like 986000000 would be 9.86*10^8 in scientific notation. Scientific notation is recognizable by the (term)*10^n, where 'n' is however many places the decimal moves.
+129898 Basically, it's just a shorthand notation. It comes in handy for expressing extremely "large" or "small" numbers.
For instance, suppose we had 9,100,000,000,000
Instead of having to write this "long" number out, we can write it as...... 9.1 x 1012
The rule is to move the decimal point to the right of the first non-zero digit and count how many places we moved it - in this case, 12 - and that's the exponent that goes on the "10." Moving the decimal point to the left results in a positive exponent. Moving it to the right results in a negative exponent, as in the following example:
.0000000000002345 = 2.345 x 10-13
It also comes in handy for multiplying/dividing large or small numbers, in certain situations.
This article explains it more thoroughly than I can:
+118680 Hi Bioschip,
It is a way of writing very big or very small numbers in a way that is easy to read and interprete (when you get used to it)
for instance
5678=5.678x1000 = 5.678 x 103
this might not seem very helpful but what about
12,345,732,000,000,000,000,000,000
this equals 1.2345732 x 1025 which is approximately 1.2 X 1025
FOR ME THIS IS MUCH EASIER TO READ. I do not have to count all the zeros.
( I have not looked at little numbers but I can if you want me to)
+1006 Scientific Notation is a style of equation where a number that is too big to be practical (i.e. a number that has many zeros after it) is shifted around until it is between 1 and 10.
For example, a number like 986000000 would be 9.86*10^8 in scientific notation. Scientific notation is recognizable by the (term)*10^n, where 'n' is however many places the decimal moves.
