Scientific Notation

8th Grade Earth and Space ScienceMrs. Liberatore

Scientific Shorthand

• In science some numbers are very, very large and some numbers are very, very small.

• Scientific notation is a convenient way to represent very large and very small numbers.

Examples

Basic Rules

• Very large numbers will have positive exponents.

• The exponent will be the number of decimal spaces moved to the left to make the base number between 1 and 9.

• Example: 5,600,000 is 5.6 X 106

Now You Try It!

• Write 44,000,000,000,000 in scientific notation.

• What is 2.98 x 104 in standard notation?

Did you know 44,000,000,000,000 km is the distance from the Earth to its next closest star system Alpha Centauri? It would take 50,000 years

to travel there – that’s far!

Basic Rules

• Very small numbers will have negative exponents.

• The exponent will be the number of decimal spaces moved to the right to make the base number between 1 and 9.

• Example: 0.0004 is 4.0 x 10-4

Now You Try It!

• Write 0.0000000001 in scientific notation.

• What is 7.98 x 10 -6 in standard notation?

Did you know 0.0000000001 m is the diameter of a single atom?