McGraw-Hill's Top 50 Skills For A Top Score: ASVAB Reading and Math

Skill 35 Use Scientific Notation

Because very large numbers like 1,245,000,000,000 and very small numbers like 0.00000345692 can be difficult to handle, very often a system called scientific notation is used to make them easier to deal with. Scientific notation is a way of writing very large or very small numbers in a more concise form.

Very Large Numbers. To convert 1,245,000,000,000 to scientific notation, rewrite the number as the product of two factors. The first factor is a number greater than or equal to 1 but less than 10. The second factor is a power of 10. Start by moving the decimal point in the original number to the left in order to create the first factor. Count the number of places the decimal point was moved: 12 places. So use ...