Understanding Scientific Notation

Scientific notation is a convenient way to express either very large numbers or very small
numbers. However, it is not limited to large or small numbers, every number can be written in
scientific notation.

The basis of scientific notation is that every number can be expressed as a multiple of ten. For
example, the number 40 is the result of multiplying 4 times 10. Since this is true, another way
of writing 40 is to write 4.0 x 10.

Now, let’s try to write the number 3,000 in scientific notation. If we check our previous
example we will see that we can also write 3,000 as 300.0 x 10. Although this way of
writing the number 3,000 is correct, when writing numbers in scientific notation we
normally leave only one number to the left of the decimal point. This means that since we
are left with 300.0 we still need to factor out the number 10 two more times. So far, our
answer looks as follows:

3.000 x 10 x 10 x 10

This is still making us write too many numbers. We could make this shorter if we
multiplied all three tens together, which would give us:

3.000 x 1000

We know this is right because 3 times 1000 is equal to 3,000, the figure we began with, but,
we are still writing too many numbers. We remedy this first by dropping the zeros and
expressing every 10 we factor out as a power. In our example, we factored out 10 three
times in order to get:

3.0 x 10 x 10 x 10

Well 10 x 10 x 10 can also be written as 10 to the third power:

3
10 x 10 x 10 = 10

Now we can write the number 3,000 in scientific notation:

3.0 x 103

This is the format numbers expressed in scientific notation follow. The number is written with
3
only one digit to the left of the decimal and the degree of power (in this case the 3 in 10 ) tells
you how many times to multiply that number by 10.

When writing 3,000 in scientific notation we dropped the zeros to the right of the decimal.
But, what if we were trying to write the number 350,400 in scientific notation? We first
have to figure out how many times we need to factor out 10 in order to put the
decimal to the right of the number 3. An easy way to figure how many times we need to
factor out the number 10 is to count the number of times we need to move the decimal to put
it in the place we want it to be. This works because every time we multiply a number by 10
the decimal moves one place to the right:

1.2 x 10 = 12 12

x 10 = 120 120 x

10 = 1200
It takes 5 moves in order to place the decimal to the right of the number 3 in 350,400.
That means we can write:
5
3.50400 x 10 But what about dropping zeros? We have three zeros in this number: one
between the four and the five, and two at end of the number. If we were to drop all of the
zeros we would get:

3.54 x 105
5
If we multiply this number by 10 you would get 354,000, which is not the number we
started with. As a rule, we only drop zeros if there is no number greater than or equal to one
to the right of that zero. Our answer would then be:

3.504 x 105

Scientific notation becomes much more practical when we want to write the number:

4,000,000,000,000 The number we want to write is 4 and it takes 12 moves in order to

move the decimal to this place so our answer is:

12
4 x 10 What about the number

540,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000? This would be written as:

32
5.402 x 10 a much more convenient figure to

write on paper.
What if we are trying to write a small number like 0.00753 in scientific notation?
3
Here it would be helpful to review the properties of exponents. When we write 10 we
mean:
10 x 10 x 10 = 1000
-3
What do we mean when we write 10 ? This means:

11
= = .001
10 • 10 • 10 1000

What this tells us is that every time we multiply a number by 10 we move the decimal one
-1
place to the right, but every time we multiply a number by 10 we move the decimal one
place to the left. For example:
-1
4.0 x 10 = 0.4
-2
2.5 x 10 = 0.025
-5
8.701 x 10 = 0.00008701

The steps we follow to write these numbers into scientific notation are very similar to what
we have already discussed. We count the number of times we have to move the decimal until
it is placed to the right of the first digit that is greater than or equal to one, write out the
number, and use the number of times we moved the decimal as our value for degree of power.
This time, however, we add a negative sign in front of this value. Let’s use the number
0.000597 as an example. We need to move the decimal 4 times to place it to the right of the
five; so the answer would be:

5.97 x 10-4

This way of expressing numbers is very useful to many scientists like astronomers who
may be trying to count the number of stars in our galaxy, or to chemists who may be trying
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to measure the weight of one atom (about 1.66 x 10 g). Whether studying the humongous
or the microscopic, scientific notation provides a practical and convenient way to express
figures.