WorkedMathGlossary

Glossary

What Is Scientific Notation?

Scientific notation expresses a number as a value between 1 and 10 multiplied by 10 raised to some power. It makes extremely large or small numbers easier to read and compare, since the exponent immediately shows the number's scale rather than requiring you to count digits or zeros.

Example

602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (Avogadro's number, roughly) is written in scientific notation as 6.02 × 10²³.

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