Question

An egg of a certain kind of insect called a Tachinidae is 0.00002 meters long. What is this length in scientific notation?

Answer 1

2.0x10^-5 or 2.0E-5 —this is because as a small decimal number, you move the decimal to the right five spaces and then add a negative to the decimal to indicate that when you translate back (from scientific notation to 0.00002) you will move the decimal to the left

Answer 2

Answer:

$2\times10^{-5}$.

Step-by-step explanation:

We have been given that an egg of a certain kind of insect called a Tachinidae is 0.00002 meters long. We are asked to write the length in scientific notation.

To write a number in scientific, we need to factors. One factor is between 0 and 10 and second is a power of 10.

The first factor will be 2.

Since our given number has 5 digits after decimal, so we will multiply 2 by 1 divided by 10 to the fifth power.

$0.00002=2\times\frac{1}{10^5}$

Using exponent property $\frac{1}{a^m}=a^{-m}$, we can write our expression as:

$0.00002=2\times10^{-5}$

Therefore, the length in scientific notation would be $2\times10^{-5}$.