Activity

Monday, October 22, 2012 10:24 PM

The average height of a human: 1.7 meters or 1.6 x 10^0 meters The average length of a hummingbird: 10 cm or 1 x 10^-1 meters The average length of an ant: 4mm or 4 x 10^-3 meters The average length of a red light wave: 750 nanometers or 7.5 x 10^-7 meters The average length of the largest virus: 440 nanometers or 4.4x 10^-7 meters DNA width: 3 nanometers or 3 x 10^-9 meters Water molecule: 280 picometers or 2.8 x 10^-10 meters
Now you will need to scroll the other way to see the universe!! The average length of a Tyrannosaurus Rex: 7 meters or 7 x 10^0 meters The average US House: 15 x 10 meters or 1.5 x 10^1 Boeing 747: 65 meters or 6.5 x 10^1 meters Rhode Island: 75 kilometers or 7.5 x 10^4 meters Pluto: 2,300 kilometers or 2.3 x 10^8 meters Earth: 12,700 kilometers or 1.27 x 10^7 meters Saturn: 120,000 kilometers or 1.2 x 10^8 meters The Sun: 1.4 million kilometers or 1.4 x 10^9 meters Total Human Height: 10 million kilometers or 1 x 10^10 m. Stingray Nebula: 700 billion kilometers (0.07 light-years) or 7 x 10^14

Copy, paste and answer the following questions in your blog: 1) When did you use negative exponents in scientific notation and why?

I used negative exponents when the number had to increase to get to scientific notation (i.e. .007 x 10^2 = 0.7 and how you get back down to .007 is you have to multiply it by the opposite of what you multiplied it by the first time being 0.7 x 10^-2)

2) When did you use positive exponents in scientific notation and why?

I used positive exponents when doing the scientific notation when I had to go down to get to scientific notation (i.e. 10 x 10^-1 = 1 and to get it back up you have to multiply it by the opposite which is 1 x 10^ 1).

3) How is using scientific notation with the same base unit of measurement when measuring multiple things helpful?

Using scientific notation with the same base unit is helpful because it is a shorter way of writing long (or really short) numbers.
4) Write about anything you noticed or found interesting.

One thing that I found interesting is that the smallest thing in the universe was 0.00000000001 yoctometers or 1 x 10^-35 meters.
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Scientific Notation Page 1