MathMaster Blog

Scientific notation is a method of expressing numbers that are either too large or too little to be written in decimal form.

The general form of scientific notation is a × 10n, where 1 ≤ a ≤ 10 and n is an integer. The number a, known as the coefficient, must be bigger than 1 and less than 10.

How to convert to scientific notations:

• Step 1: Place or move the decimal point of a number until the coefficient of the number is greater than 1 and less than 10.
• Step 2: Record down the coefficient (a) and count the number of steps the decimal point was moved
• Step 3: The number of steps moved (n) is taken as the exponent.

Example:

Convert 81 900 000 000 000 to scientific notation.

Solution:

Step1:

Place the decimal to the number by counting from the right to the left.

Step2:

The coefficient of the number should be between 1 and 10, and in this case 8.19 is our coefficient.

Step3:

Count the number of steps moved because this will be the power of the base 10.

Step4:

Multiply the coefficient by the base: $ 8.19 \times 10^{13} $

Answer: $8.19 \times 10^{13} $