How do you answer measurement in scientific notation?

Answer 1

Example 1: Numbers greater than 1

124000 km would be 1.24 x 105 km in scientific notation. Notice the trailing zeros were omitted. Also notice that 124 was changed to 1.24. This is the coefficient and must be less than 10. This will result in a coefficient that has only one nonzero digit in front of the decimal. Another part of the number in scientific notation is the base 10 with an exponent. The exponent indicates the number of decimal places that the decimal place was moved. In this case, the decimal point was moved 5 places to the left, so the exponent is 5. It is positive because moving the decimal point to the right 5 spaces restores the number to expanded form.

Example 2: Numbers less than 1

0.000685g would be 6.85 x 10-4g in scientific notation. Notice the leading zeros were omitted. Also notice that 685 was changed to the coefficient 6.85 and the base 10 has an exponent of -4. This indicates that the decimal point was moved 4 spaces to the right. It is negative because moving the decimal point to the left 4 spaces restores the number to its expanded form.