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8.8: Scientific Notation

Difficulty Level: At Grade Created by: CK-12
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What if you knew that the population of the United States was 308,000,000? How could you simplify this number so that it is easier to work with? After completing this Concept, you'll be able to write very large and very small numbers like this one in scientific notation.

Guidance

Consider the number six hundred and forty three thousand, two hundred and ninety seven. We write it as 643,297 and each digit’s position has a “value” assigned to it. You may have seen a table like this before:

We’ve seen that when we write an exponent above a number, it means that we have to multiply a certain number of copies of that number together. We’ve also seen that a zero exponent always gives us 1, and negative exponents give us fractional answers.

Look carefully at the table above. Do you notice that all the column headings are powers of ten? Here they are listed:

Even the “units” column is really just a power of ten. Unit means 1, and 1 is .

If we divide 643,297 by 100,000 we get 6.43297; if we multiply 6.43297 by 100,000 we get 643, 297. But we have just seen that 100,000 is the same as , so if we multiply 6.43297 by we should also get 643,297. In other words,

Writing Numbers in Scientific Notation

In scientific notation, numbers are always written in the form , where is an integer and is between 1 and 10 (that is, it has exactly 1 nonzero digit before the decimal). This notation is especially useful for numbers that are either very small or very large.

Here’s a set of examples:

Look at the first example and notice where the decimal point is in both expressions.

So the exponent on the ten acts to move the decimal point over to the right. An exponent of 4 moves it 4 places and an exponent of 3 would move it 3 places.

This makes sense because each time you multiply by 10, you move the decimal point one place to the right. 1.07 times 10 is 10.7, times 10 again is 107.0, and so on.

Similarly, if you look at the later examples in the table, you can see that a negative exponent on the 10 means the decimal point moves that many places to the left. This is because multiplying by is the same as multiplying by , which is like dividing by 10. So instead of moving the decimal point one place to the right for every multiple of 10, we move it one place to the left for every multiple of .

That’s how to convert numbers from scientific notation to standard form. When we’re converting numbers to scientific notation, however, we have to apply the whole process backwards. First we move the decimal point until it’s immediately after the first nonzero digit; then we count how many places we moved it. If we moved it to the left, the exponent on the 10 is positive; if we moved it to the right, it’s negative.

So, for example, to write 0.000032 in scientific notation, we’d first move the decimal five places to the right to get 3.2; then, since we moved it right, the exponent on the 10 should be negative five, so the number in scientific notation is .

You can double-check whether you’ve got the right direction by comparing the number in scientific notation with the number in standard form, and thinking “Does this represent a big number or a small number?” A positive exponent on the 10 represents a number bigger than 10 and a negative exponent represents a number smaller than 10, and you can easily tell if the number in standard form is bigger or smaller than 10 just by looking at it.

For more practice, try the online tool at http://hotmath.com/util/hm_flash_movie.html?movie=/learning_activities/interactivities/sciNotation.swf. Click the arrow buttons to move the decimal point until the number in the middle is written in proper scientific notation, and see how the exponent changes as you move the decimal point.

Example A

Write the following numbers in scientific notation.

a) 63

b) 9,654

c) 653,937,000

d) 0.003

e) 0.000056

f) 0.00005007

Solution

a)

b)

c)

d)

e)

f)

Example B

a)

b)

c)

Solution

The key to evaluating expressions involving scientific notation is to group the powers of 10 together and deal with them separately.

a) But isn’t in proper scientific notation, because it has more than one digit before the decimal point. We need to move the decimal point one more place to the left and add 1 to the exponent, which gives us .

b)

c)

When we use scientific notation in the real world, we often round off our calculations. Since we’re often dealing with very big or very small numbers, it can be easier to round off so that we don’t have to keep track of as many digits—and scientific notation helps us with that by saving us from writing out all the extra zeros. For example, if we round off 4,227, 457,903 to 4,200,000,000, we can then write it in scientific notation as simply .

When rounding, we often talk of significant figures or significant digits. Significant figures include

• all nonzero digits
• all zeros that come before a nonzero digit and after either a decimal point or another nonzero digit

For example, the number 4000 has one significant digit; the zeros don’t count because there’s no nonzero digit after them. But the number 4000.5 has five significant digits: the 4, the 5, and all the zeros in between. And the number 0.003 has three significant digits: the 3 and the two zeros that come between the 3 and the decimal point.

Example C

Evaluate the following expressions. Round to 3 significant figures and write your answer in scientific notation.

a)

b)

Solution

It’s easier if we convert to fractions and THEN separate out the powers of 10.

a)

b)

Watch this video for help with the Examples above.

Vocabulary

• In scientific notation, numbers are always written in the form , where is an integer and is between 1 and 10 (that is, it has exactly 1 nonzero digit before the decimal).

Guided Practice

Evaluate the following expression. Round to 3 significant figures and write your answer in scientific notation.

Solution:

Note that we have to leave in the final zero to indicate that the result has been rounded.

Practice

Write the numerical value of the following.

Write the following numbers in scientific notation.

1. 120,000
2. 1,765,244
3. 12
4. 0.00281
5. 0.000000027

How many significant digits are in each of the following?

1. 38553000
2. 2754000.23
3. 0.0000222
4. 0.0002000079

Round each of the following to two significant digits.

1. 3.0132
2. 82.9913

Vocabulary Language: English

order of magnitude

order of magnitude

Formally, the order of magnitude is the exponent in scientific notation. Informally it refers to size. Two objects or numbers are of the same order of magnitude are relatively similar sizes.
Scientific Notation

Scientific Notation

Scientific notation is a means of representing a number as a product of a number that is at least 1 but less than 10 and a power of 10.
Standard Form

Standard Form

As opposed to scientific notation, standard form means writing numbers in the usual way with all of the zeros accounted for in the value.

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Date Created:
Oct 01, 2012