What is scientific notation?

1 Answer
Oct 19, 2014

The scientific notation is a way of writing out a number.
This is most useful when dealing with very large or very small numbers

a number in scientific notation form is in the form

a * 10^b

where 1 <= a < 10 and b is an integer.

For example, 1 000 000 000 000 in scientific notation form is
1.0 * 10^12

Another example, 0.0000000123 is 1.23 * 10^-8