Why do you need to write ordinary numbers into scientific notations?

Answer 1

A quick story: A long time ago, scientists were working on a big project where they had to use huge numbers, in the billions in the trillions and quadrillions. One day, a scientist name Billy Bob had to write the number six-hundred quadrillion 10 times so he could give this number to his friends. His hand grew very tired as he added zero after zero.

Finally, he stood up, and said, "My hand freaking hurts and I'm done writing all these damn zeros!"

So, he invented a system were he wrote down exactly how many zeros to add, or, how many times to the right or the left the decimal place should be moved.

For example, 4.5 x 1030 = 45000000000000000000000000000000. If you had to write that number over and over again, you would feel like crap.

Also, it serves another purpose with multiplying and dividing large numbers.

For example:

(4 x 103) x (5 x 106) First, you would multiply the 4 and the 5 to get 20. Then, add the "baby numbers" together to get 9. That would make it 20 x 109, but then you make it 2.0 instead of 20, so by doing that you would also take one away from the exponent (because you move the decimal point one less place), making the final answer 2 x 108. That's A LOT easier to write and multiply than the real numbers.

So, there. Why waste time writing all those digits?!