Question

The water level in an inflatable pool decreases by about 6.35×10−16.35×10−1 centimeters each day due to evaporation. There are 8.64×1048.64×104 seconds in a day. About how many centimeters does the water level in the pool decrease each second?

Answer 1

Answer: 7.3*10^-6
comment if got right or wrong

Answer 2

7.35 x 10^-6 cm per second This is an exercise in division using scientific notation. So 6.35x10^-1 / 8.64x10^4 = ? To perform division using scientific notation, you divide the significands as you would normally. So 6.35 / 8.64 = 0.734953704 Then you subtract the exponents. So -1 - 4 = -5 Giving you a result of 0.734953704 x 10^-5 Notice that the significand in this case is less than 1. That means that you now need to normalize the result, getting a significand that's greater than or equal to 1 and less than 10. We can do this by multiplying the significand by 10 and then subtracting 1 from the exponent. So 0.734953704 * 10 = 7.34953704 -5 - 1 = -6 Giving a new result of: 7.34953704 x 10^-6 And don't forget about significant figures. Since the least precise piece of data we have is 3 digits, we should round the result to 3 digits. So the final answer is 7.35 x 10^-6 cm per second.