Scientific Notation What is a Power of Ten
- Slides: 8
Scientific Notation What is a Power of Ten? BETA Regents Physics September 5 th, 2008
• In physics, we often use Scientific notation to write very large or very small numbers. 2, 300, 000, 000. 0 meters 12 10 8 6 4 2 9 7 5 1 11 3 is the same thing as 12 2. 3 x 10 meters
Powers of Ten watch the short movie "Powers of Ten", by Ray and Carles Eames, 1977.
• In the movie, you saw that some powers of ten had special names Power of Ten 10^1 10^2 10^3 Name Ten Hundred Thousand 10^4 10^5 10^6 10^7 10^8 10^9 10^12 Ten Thousand Hundred Thousand Million Ten Million Hundred Million Billion Trillion
Prefixes • As physics, we often write a word to stand in for writing a power of ten. • 2. 3 x 10^3 meters, we will write 2. 3 kilometers, or 2. 3 km. • 2. 3 x 10^(-3) meters, we will write. 0023 or 2. 3 millimeters.
Factor Prefix Symbol 1012 109 106 103 102 101 tera giga mega kilo hecto deka T G M k h da 10 -1 10 -2 10 -3 10 -6 10 -9 10 -12 deci centi milli micro nano pico d c m µ n p
Practice • Someone measured the empire state building to be 38100 centimeters. How many meters is this? • Would it have been easier to measure the building in meters? • Would it have been easier to measure the building in kilometers?
MAKE YOUR BEST GUESS. • How many kilometers away is Yankee stadium? • How many hectometers is the track outside? • How many milligrams does a grain of salt weigh?