Scientific notation and why it’s necessary

Question

Because every science course I’ve taken so far has left me even more confused than ever.

In: 15

Answer 1

One reason scientific notation is useful because counting digits is hard.

Lets consider 50 million. That’s “5” followed by 7 zeros. “50000000”.

That looks an awful lot like 5 million, “5” followed by 6 zeros. “5000000”.

Honestly, can you count those zeros easily?

But if I write 5.0×10^7 then you don’t have to count the zeros because you know there are seven of them.

And if I write 5.0×10^6 then you know there are 6 zeros.

This is helpful even if they aren’t all zeros. Consider a number like 15 million. That’s 1.5×10^7 Instead of 7 zeros, it’s 7 digits after the first digit.