Art of Condensing Long Numbers
There is a lot of buzz about us one day visiting Mars. The distance between Earth and Mars varies depending on where the planets are in the orbit. On average, the distance between Earth and Mars is approximately 140,000,000 miles. That is a looong way to travel and also a long number to write.
To simplify writing out such a long number, scientists use scientific notation. First step is to place a decimal point right after your first digit. Next, set up the power of ten. This is determined by how many places the decimal point had to move to end up right after the first number.
Let’s take 140,000,000 miles. To move the decimal place all the way behind the first number, we need to move eight spaces. Therefore, the distance from Earth to Mars is 1.4 x 10⁸ in scientific notation.
Teeny, Tiny Numbers Can Also Be Long
Consider the decimal .00000478. We can write that in scientific notation too. Instead of moving the decimal point to the left, we move it to the right. Same rules apply as large numbers. Move the decimal until you reach the first number that is 1 or greater. Place the decimal point after that. Then you add your power of ten, but the exponent will be a negative number since we moved the decimal point to the right.
In the example below, we moved the decimal point six spaces to the right. and made our notation negative.
