Question

Can someone explain scientific notation to me? And also another question. Is 9.725 x 10^6 a scientific notation? What about 9.7250 x 10^6

Answer 1

Both of those values are in scientific notation

Scientific notation is when we have numbers of the form $a \times 10^b$ where $0 \le a < 10$ and b is an integer.

Both 9.725 and 9.7250 are inside the inequality mentioned above.

Scientific notation is used to help describe very large numbers, or very small numbers, depending on context.

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If you wanted to convert from scientific notation to standard notation, then you'll move the decimal point based on what the exponent is. The positive 6 means we move the decimal point 6 places to the right.

We go from 9.725 to 9,725,000 which is about 9.7 million

In other words, $9.725 \times 10^6 = 9,725,000$

As another example, $1.23 \times 10^{11} = 123,000,000,000 = \text{123 billion}$ since we start at 1.23 and move the decimal point 11 spots to the right to arrive at 123,000,000 aka 123 billion.