8th Grade - Scientific Notation

Measurements in science may be very small of very large.  For example, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is about 150,000,000 km and the mass of a dust particle is about 0.000000000763 kg.

Scientists have developed a concise method to express these very large and very small numbers so that we can easily manipulate and remember them.

Instead of writing many trailing or leading zeros, we can write:

150,000,000 km = 1.5 x 108 km

0.000000000763 = 7.63 x 10-10 kg

This is called scientific notation.

Homework: Exercise 1.5 (page 20) #1 (a, c, e), #2 - 3
Due: 09/23