Because every science course I’ve taken so far has left me even more confused than ever.
In: 15
What’s easier to write? 5430000000 or 5.43×10^9 ?
Once numbers get really big or really small, we don’t want to write all of those zeros. This is also why we have prefixes for units. 5.1nm is 5.1×10^-9 m it’s just an extension of scientific notation.
It also makes calculation by hand much simpler. 6.9×10^8 * 1.2×10^-3 / 3.4×10^4 is the same as (6.9*1.2/3.4)×10^(8-3-4) or 10^1. So now I have an expression with 2 digit numbers and a single exponent.
It’s also very easy to see how many significant figures a number has. 1.2×10^7 has 2 significant figures, but 1.200×10^7 has 4 significant figured. If we had the number 12000000, according to sig fig rules, it has 2, but there’s no way to express that it’s 4. Significant figures are important for notation how precise a calculated number is.
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