put 878,000 in Scientific Notation

Question

put 878,000 in Scientific Notation

Answer 1

When you put a number in scientific notation you write it as a product of two numbers.

The first number is between 1 and 10 and the second number is a power of ten.

The idea is to write a physically long number (very large or very small) in a sort of short-hand notation.

You can eliminate all trailing zeroes but you must keep all non-zero digits and all zeroes that fall between non-zero digits.

The digits you keep must remain in the order in which they appear in the original number.

878,000

You can eliminate all the zeroes but you must keep the 878.

Where would you put the decimal point in 878 so that the number is between 1 and 10 ?

0.878, 8.78, 87.8, or 878. ???

The answer is 8.78

8.78 now must be multiplied by a power of ten so that we get back to the original number 878,000.

The decimal point must move 5 places to the right to get back to 878,000.

The answer to the problem is 8.78*10⁵