Hello! So Sophia cuts two pieces of ribbon that are different lengths and lines them up together. To find the total length of the two ribbons, let's add them up. Because there is no digit in the thousandths place, we'll fill that in with a zero. Now, let's add up the numbers. 9.281 + 7.740 = 17.021. There. The total length of the ribbons is 17.021 cm long.
3.3 is greater than 3.01
Hope this helps!
Yup, the amount of 0's is the exponent. for example 1000= 10^3, hope this helped :)