Question

A city has two water towers. One tower holds 7.35 x 10 with an exponent of 5, gallons of water and the other tower holds 9.78x 10 with an exponent of 5, gallons of water. What is the combined water capacity of the two towers?

Answer 1

Sum with scientific notation. We just ignore the 10^5, because the two numbers have the same exponent and repeat it on the result of the normal sum between the numbers.

But, for example, if we had:

-> 5 x 10^4 + 5 x 10^5

We would need to equal the exponents to do the sum without having to multiply all those tens.

5 x 10^4 + 50 x 10^4
= 55 x 10^4

or 0.5 x 10^5 + 5 x 10^5
= 5.5 x 10^5

*They are the same results.

Now returning to the question:

-> 7.35 + 9.78 = 17.13
-> 17.13 x 10^5

You can prove it yourself:

-> 7.35 x 10^5 = 735,000

-> 9.78 x 10^5 = 978,000

-> 735,000 + 978,000 = 1,713,000

Or: 1713 x 10^3 or 17.13 x 10^5

Answer: The combined capacity of the two tower is 17.13 x 10^5 gallons of water.

Answer 2

Answer:

the answer is actually 1.713x10^6

Step-by-step explanation: