It is very awkward to write all those zeros for very big numbers, so scientists have created a way to write these numbers more easily. This method is called scientific notation.
For example, to write the number 5,214 in scientific notation, you move the decimal place so that it falls just to the right of the first numeral, and then write "times 10 to the third" So 5,214 would be written like this:
Notice that the exponent to which you raise the 10 (in this example, the exponent is 3) is the number of decimal places you moved the decimal point. "Ten to the third" is equal to 1000 (ten times ten times ten), which is 1 with 3 zeros. Here are some other examples:
Written in scientific notation the length of the string of rice in miles, laid end-to-end, would be:
The distance from Earth to Alpha Centauri, 25,000,000,000,000 miles, can be written in scientific notation as:
The great advantage of scientific notation is that it makes it very easy to work with these large numbers. To find out how many times the distance to Alpha Centauri can be divided by the length of the string of rice, we would want to divide the second number above by the first number. In scientific notation, written as a fraction, the problem would look like this:
Therefore, we can see that the grains of rice, placed end-to-end, will indeed stretch more than from the Earth to Alpha Centauri and back again.
Almost all fields of science, from archaeology to zoology, work with large (and small) numbers all the time. Therefore, they use scientific notation for many different applications. Here is another example of a math problem using scientific notation:
