Brief review of the rules for those who need a "brush up":
· Any large (or small) number can be expressed as the product of two terms.
· A number with a value between 1 and 10 (the prefactor) that gives the precision or accuracy of the original number.
· A power of 10 (i.e. an exponent, the exponent is the “power”
· To multiply numbers in scientific notation, multiply the prefactors and add the exponents (e.g. the powers of 10)
· To divide numbers in scientific notation, divide the prefactors and subtract the exponent of the number in the denominator from the exponent of the number in the numerator
Examples:
10
4 = 10 x 10 x 10 x 10
2,
578,000 =
2.578 x 10 6
0.000002578
= 2.578 x 10 –6
(2.5 x 10 6) x
(3 x 10 –4 ) = 7.5 x 10 2
(7.5 x 10 5) / (2.5 x 10 2) = 3.0 x 10
<===
what is the exponent?
Practice:
The wavelength of ultraviolet radiation is 10 –7 meters = _____________ m
The population of the world is ~ 7,000,000,000 people = _____________people
The ratio of the diameter of the Earth (use “whole
globe” on the Powers of Ten chart)
to the diameter of a carbon atom (use “outer electron shell of C atom” in
chart) is: ______________________
Scroll down for the answers . . . .
