Mastering Technical Mathematics, Third Edition, 3rd Edition

25	Scientific Notation Tutorial

In science and engineering, huge or tiny quantities can be unwieldy when written out in full as decimal numerals. Scientific notation provides a “shortcut” for writing such quantities. You’ve already seen scientific notation in this book. Chapter 24 had plenty of it! If any of this notation has confused you in the past, this chapter explains and reviews how scientific notation and significant figures work.

STANDARD FORM

The scientist’s and engineer’s way of denoting extreme quantities is to write them as real number multiples of integer powers of 10. A numeral in standard scientific notation, also called the American form, is written as follows:

where the dot (.) is a period written on the base-line, representing ...