The Language of Measurement
Powers & Scientific Notation
10 min · 2 worked examples · 3 questionsFree
Handling the very large and very small without drowning in zeros.
After this lesson you can
- Write very large and very small quantities in scientific notation
- Multiply and divide powers of ten in your head
- Add quantities whose exponents do not match
Why we need it
Engineering quantities span an absurd range. The charge on a single electron is 0.00000000000000000016 coulombs. A capacitor might store 0.000001 farads. A radio might operate at 2,400,000,000 hertz. Writing those out is error-prone, miscount the zeros once and your answer is out by a factor of ten.
Scientific notation writes every number as a value between 1 and 10, multiplied by a power of ten.
In the full lesson
- Why we need it
- Reading and writing it
- Engineering notation
- Multiplying and dividing
Free with an account. Read it, work the examples, answer the questions, then build it in the simulator.