25 lines
1.1 KiB
Markdown
25 lines
1.1 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: Scientific Notation
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---
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## Scientific Notation
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Scientific notation is a way of writing very large/small numbers in order to more easily handle them in computation.
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We can think of a number in scientific notation being comprised of a "digit term" and an "exponential term"
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The digit term contains the significant figures of the number. The digit term must be a number between 1 and 10. The exponential term contains the placeholder zeros and locates where the decimal is placed. If the exponential term has a negative exponent, that means that the number is smaller than one, and that the decimal point must be moved a certain number of spaces to the left. Whereas a positive exponential number means that the number is very large and the decimal point must be moved to the right.
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#### Example:
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545,000,000,000 written in scientific notation: 5.45 x 10^11
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0.0000000000030435 = 3.0435 x 10^-12
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10 = 1.0 x 10^1
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1 = 1.0 x 10^0
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#### More Information:
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* [Great article including arithmetic in scientific notation](https://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/fyp/mathrev/mr-scnot.html)
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* [wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_notation)
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