Scientific Notation

Where a number is written in two parts:

First: just the digits (with the decimal point placed after the first digit),

Followed by: ×10 to a power that would put the decimal point back where it should be.

Coefficient and Base in Scientific Notation

Scientific Notation also avoids the headache and potential errors of counting lots of
zeros.
The number 123000000 in scientific notation is written as:

1.23 x 108

The first number 1.23 is called the coefficient. It is always a single digit followed by a
decimal point and then the rest, but usually only two digits.
The second number is called the base and in scientific notation must always be 10. In
the number 1.23 x 108 the number 8 is the exponent or power of ten.
Very large/very small numbers
Very large numbers can be awkward to write. For example, the approximate distance from the
earth to the sun is ninety three million miles. This is commonly written as the number "93"
followed by six zeros signifying that the "93" is actually 93 million miles and not 93 thousand
miles or 93 miles.

Scientific notation (also called exponential notation) provides a more compact method for writing
very large (or very small) numbers. In scientific notation, the distance from the earth to the sun
is 9.3 x 107 miles.

Very small numbers can be as awkward to write as large numbers. A paper clip weighs a bit more
than one thousandth of a pound (0.0011 LB). This would be expressed in scientific notation as 1.1
x 10-3 lb. The negative sign indicates that the decimal point is moved to the left.
Numbers are customarily written with one digit to the left of the decimal point. Numbers may be
correctly represented in other ways.

Examples

 An electron's mass is about 0.00000000000000000000000000000091093822 kg. In

scientific notation, this is written 9.1093822×10−31 kg.
 The Earth's mass is about 5973600000000000000000000 kg. In scientific notation,
this is written 5.9736×1024 kg.
 The Earth's circumference is approximately 40000000 m. In scientific notation, this
is 4×107 m. In engineering notation, this is written 40×106 m. In SI writing style, this may
be written "40 Mm" (40 megameters).
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 An inch is 25400 micrometers. Describing an inch as 2.5400×10 µm unambiguously
states that this conversion is correct to the nearest micrometer. An approximated value
with only three significant digits would be 2.54×104 µm instead. In this example, the
number of significant zeros is actually infinite (which is not the case with most scientific
measurements, which have a limited degree of precision). It can be properly written with
the minimum number of significant zeros used with other numbers in the application (no
need to have more significant digits that other factors or addends). Or a bar can be
written over a single zero, indicating that it repeats forever. The bar symbol is just as
valid in scientific notation as it is in decimal notation.
Converting scientific notation to English requires the use of the following
prefixes or suffices: