Answers
Scientific notation is a way to deal with writing out very large or very small numbers.
10 October 2011
Do you have any examples you are struggling with?
10 October 2011
a new movie costs £320 million to make write this amount in scientific notation
10 October 2011
okay, how would you write it normally - without the word million?
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320 000 000
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So what do you think the scientific notation would look like?
10 October 2011
7
10 October 2011
Spot on, so how many 0's are there?
10 October 2011
thats what i need help with i don't understand how to write it out
10 October 2011
okay so we could write:
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What does equal?
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10000000 i think
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Yes!
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So
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Does that make sense?
10 October 2011
to see if i understand
10 October 2011
can you maybe ask me a question
10 October 2011
We're not quite there yet, but I will in a second
10 October 2011
Scientists often prefer to use normalised scientific notation. So if the first number is greater than 1, but less than 10 - we add a decimal point, and add one to the exponent. So we get
10 October 2011
okay
10 October 2011
Okay, let's give it a go. What is the scientific notation for ?
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9.75 to the power of 6
10 October 2011
Almost! We must not say "to the power of 6" because that would look like this , what we want (and what I think you mean) is
10 October 2011
okay i think i understand
10 October 2011
and we would say "9.75 times 10 to the power 6"
10 October 2011
You might see it on the calculator shortened to this as well.
10 October 2011
Why do you think scientific notation is useful?
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okay then
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because you don't need to write a large number with lots of zero's?
10 October 2011
Yes, often scientists deal with huge numbers, like the distance from the earth to the sun. It is a lot easier to write it out in scientific notation in these cases. They also often round the number to only a few significant figures to keep things really short.
10 October 2011
thankyou for helping me understand
10 October 2011
No problem Maina
10 October 2011
smiley face
10 October 2011
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