Scientific Notation
Scientific Notation (also called
Standard Form in Britain) is a special way of writing numbers:
| Like this: | |  |
| | |
| Or this: | |  |
Scientific notation is a way of writing numbers that are too big or too small to be
conveniently written as ordinary numbers. Scientific notation is commonly used
in calculators and by scientists, mathematicians and engineers.
In scientific notation all numbers are written in the
form of 
(a times ten raised to the power of b), where the exponent
b is an integer, and the coefficient a is a decimal number between 1 and 10. It gives the number’s order of magnitude. If the
number is negative then a minus sign
precedes a (as in ordinary
decimal notation).
Standard decimal notation
|
Scientific notation
|
2
|
2×100
|
3800
|
3.8×103
|
450000
|
4.5×105
|
0.2
|
2×10−1
|
|
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7.51×10−9
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|