Question

What is 3.311 x 10^24 in 2 sig figs?

Answer 1

Answer:

D. 3.3 x 10^24

Explanation:

In a number representing a measurement, the significant figure are those digits that have a meaningful contribution to specify the resolution of the measurement.

When a number is written in scientific notation, it is written as:

$N=m \cdot 10^n$

where

m is the base

n is the exponent

When a number is written in this form, the number of significant figures is the number of digits contained in $m$.

In this problem, our number is initially written as

$3.311\cdot 10^{24}$

We see that here "m" contains 4 digits, so here we have 4 significant figures.

In order to reduce it to 2 significant figures, we have to rewrite 3.311 as 3.3, therefore the new number will be:

$3.3\cdot 10^{24}$

Which is option D.