—Scientific Notation Examples: Shortening Equations & Numbers

Scientific notation is like shorthand for writing very large or very small numbers. Instead of writing the number in decimal form, the number is shortened to a number multiplied by a power of ten.

—Scientific Notation Examples

Here are examples of scientific notation:

1 = 100

10 = 1 x 10¹

100 = 1 x 10²

1000 = 1 x 10³

10000 = 1 x 104

100000 = 1 x 105

42,000,000 = 4.2 x 107

676,000,000,000 = 6.76 x 1011

0.1 = 1 x 10-1

0.01 = 1 x 10-2

0.001 = 1 x 10-3

0.0001 = 1 x 10-4

0.00001 = 1 x 10-5

0.00000078 = 7.8 x 10-7

0.000000000000000 = 3.56 x 10-13

—Real Life Examples of Scientific Notation

Explore how scientific notation is used to express large numbers.

—7 x 109 = Population of the world is around 7 billion written out as 7,000,000,000 —1.08 x 109 = Approximate speed of light is 1080 million km per hour or 1,080,000,000 km per hour

—2.4 x 105 = Distance from the Earth to the moon is 240 thousand miles or 240,000 miles

—9.3 x 107 = Distance from the Earth to the sun is 93 million miles or 93,000,000 miles

—3.99 x 1013 = Distance from the sun to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) is 39,900,000,000,000 km

—9.4605284 × 1015 = Distance light travels in a year is less than 9.5 trillion kilometers, or exactly 9,460,528,400,000,000 km

—1.4 x 108 = Amount of water surface area on the Earth is 140 million square miles or 140,000,000 square miles

—1.0 x 1014 = Approximate number of cells in the human body is 100 trillion or 100,000,000,000,000

—1.332 x 10-3 = Density of oxygen is 1332 millionths g per cc or .001332 g per cc

—2.4 x 10-3 = Diameter of a grain of sand is 24 ten-thousandths inch or .0024 inch

—7.53 x 10-10 = Mass of a dust particle is 0.000000000753 kg

—9.1093822 × 10-31 = Mass of an electron is 0.00000000000000000000000000000091093822 kg

—4.0 x 10-7 = Length of the shortest wavelength of visible light (violet) is 0.0000004 meter