Scientific Notation (old)

Exponents, radicals, and scientific notation

Scientific notation

Scientific Notation (old)
Scientific Notation Examples
Scientific notation intuition
Scientific Notation
Scientific Notation I
Scientific Notation 3 (new)
Scientific Notation Example 2
Scientific notation
Scientific notation 3
Multiplying in Scientific Notation
Multiplying and dividing scientific notation
Orders of magnitude

Scientific Notation (old) Introduction to Scientific Notation

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Scientific Notation (old)

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of science, you're going to be dealing with a lot of numbers.
It doesn't matter whether you do biology or chemistry or
physics, numbers are involved.
And in many cases the numbers are very large.
There are very, very large numbers.
Very large numbers, or they're very small, very small
numbers, very small numbers.
You could imagine some very large number.
If I were to ask you, how many atoms are there
in the human body?
Or how many cells are in the human body?
Or the mass of the earth in kilograms?
Those are very large numbers.
If I were to ask you, if I were to ask you the mass of an
electron, that would be a very, very small number.
So any kind of science, you're going to be dealing with these.
Just as an example, let me show you one of the most common
numbers you're going to see, especially chemistry, it's
called Avogadro's number.
Avogadro's number.
And if I were to write it in just the standard way of
writing a number, it would literally be written as, do
it in a new color, it would be 6 0 2 2 and then
another twenty 0's.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
And even if I were to throw some commas in here, it's not
going to really help the situation to make
it more readable.
Let me throw some commas in here.
It's still a huge number, and I don't even, you know, if I had
to write this on a piece of paper, or if I were to publish
some paper on, you know, using Avogadro's number, it would
take me forever to write this.
And even more, it's hard to tell if I forgot to
write a 0, or if I maybe wrote too many 0's.
So there's a problem here.
Is there a better way to write this?
So is there a better way to write this, than to write
it all out like this.
To write literally the 6 followed by the 23 digits,
or the 6 0 2 2 followed by the twenty 0's there.
And to answer that question, and in case you're curious,
Avogadro's number, if you had twelve grams of carbon,
especially twelve grams of carbon-12, this is how many
atoms you would have in that.
And so you know, twelve grams is like 1/50th of a pound.
So that just gives you an idea of how many atoms are laying
around at any point in time.
This is a huge number.
The point here isn't to teach you some chemistry.
The point here is to talk about an easier way to write this.
And the easier way to write this we call
scientific notation.
Scientific notation.
And take my word for it, even though it might be a little
unnatural for you, it really is an easier way to write things
like, things like that.
So let me, before I show you how to do it, let me show
you the underlying theory behind scientific notation.
If I were to tell you, what, what is 10 to the 0 power?
We know that's equal to 1.
What is 10 to the 1 power?
Well that's equal to 10.
What's 10 squared?
That's 10 times 10, that's 100.
What is 10 to the third?
10 to the third is 10 times 10 times 10 which
is equal to 1,000.
I think you see a general pattern here.
10 to the 0 has no 0's.
No 0's in it, right?
10 to the 1 has 1 0.
10 to the second power, I was going to say the "twoth" power.
10 to the second power has two 2 0's Finally, 10 to
the third has three 0's.
Don't want to beat a dead horse here, but I think
you get the idea.
Three 0's.
If I were to do, if I were to do 10 to the 100th power, 10
to the 100th power, what would that look like?
I don't feel like writing it all out here, but it would be
1 followed by, you could guess it, 100 0's.
So it would just be a bunch of 0's.
And if we were to count up all of those 0's, you would
have 100 0's right there.
And actually, this might be interesting just as an aside.
You may or may not know what this number is called.
This is called a googol.
A googol.
In the early nineties if someone said, hey that's, you
know, that's a googol, you wouldn't have thought of a
search engine, you would have thought of the number
10 to the 100th power.
Which is a huge number.
If you actually, it's more than the number of atoms, or the
estimated number of atoms in the known universe.
In the known universe.
I mean, you know, raises the question of what else
is it that's out there?
But you know, I was reading up on this not too long ago, and
if I remember correctly, the known universe as the order of
10 to the 79th to 10 to the 81 atoms.
And this is of course rough.
No one can really count this.
People are just kind of estimating it, or even
better guestimating it.
But this is a huge number.
But maybe even more interesting to you, this number was the
motivation behind the naming of a very popular search
engine Google.
googol with the "ol".
And I don't know why they called it Google.
Maybe they got the domain name, maybe they want to
hold this much information.
Maybe that many bytes of information, or it's
just a cool word.
Whatever it is, maybe it was, you know, was the
founder's favorite number.
But it's a cool thing, you know.
But anyway, I'm digressing.
This is a googol, just 1 with a hundred 0's.
But I could equivalently just written that as 10 to 100.
Which is, you know, clearly an easier way, this is an
easier way to write this.
This is easier.
In fact, this is so hard to write that I didn't even
take the trouble write it.
It would have taken me forever.
This was just twenty 0's right here.
A hundred 0's, I would have filled up this screen and you
would have found it boring, so I didn't even write it.
So clearly this is easier to write.
And so, you might very well think, right, this is just good
for powers of ten, right?
But how can we write something that isn't a direct
power of 10?
How can we use the power of the simplicity?
How can we use the power of the simplicity somehow?
And to do that, you just need to make the realization.
This number, this number, we would write it as.
So this has how many digits in It has 1, 2,
3, and then twenty 0's.
So that's twenty-three digits after the 6, right?
Twenty-three digits after the 6.
What happens if I have, if I use this, if I try to get close
to it with a power of 10.
So what if I were to say 10 to the 23?
With this magenta.
10 to the 23rd power.
That's equal to what?
That equals 1 with twenty-three 0's.
So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one,
twenty-two, twenty-three.
You get the idea.
That's 10 to the 23rd.
Now can we somehow write this guy as some
Because if we multiplied this guy by 6, so what is 6, if we
multiply 6 times 10 to the 23rd, what do we get?
Well we're just going to have a 6 with twenty-three 0's.
We have a 6, and then you're going to have twenty-three 0's.
Let me write that.
You're going to have twenty-three 0's like that.
Because all I did, if you take 6 times this, you know how to
multiply, you'd have 6 times this 1, and you'd get a 6,
and all the 6 times the 0'x will all be 0's.
So we'll have 6 followed by twenty-three 0's.
So that's pretty useful.
But still, we're not getting quite to this number.
I mean this had some, this had some 2's in there.
So how could we do it a little bit better?
Well, what if we wrote it as a decimal?
This number, this number right here, is identical to this
number is if these 2's were 0's.
But if we have, we want to put those 2's there,
what could we do?
Well we could put some decimals here.
We could say that it's the same thing as 6.022
times 10 to the 23rd.
And now this number is identical to this number,
but it's a much easier way to write it.
And you could verify it if you like.
It'll take a long time.
Maybe we should do it with a smaller number first.
But if you multiply 6.022 times 10 to the twenty-third, and you
write it all out, you will get this number right there.
You will get Avogadro's number.
Avogadro's number.
And although this is complicated, or it looks
a little bit unintuitive to you at first.
You know, this was just a number written out.
This has a multiplication, and then a 10 to a power.
You say, hey, that's not so simple.
But it really is.
Because you immediately know how many 0's there are.
And it's obviously a much shorter way to
write this number.
Let's do a couple more.
This was, I started with Avogadro's number because it
really shows you the need for a scientific notation, so you
don't have to write things like that over and over again.
So let's do a couple of other numbers.
And we'll just write them in scientific notation.
So let's say I have the number, let's say I
have the number 7,345.
And I want to write it in scientific notation.
So the, I guess the best way to think about it is,
Well I wrote it over here.
10 to the third is 1,000.
So we know that 10 to the third is equal to 1,000.
So essentially the largest power of 10 that I
can fit into this.
This is 7 thousand.
So this is 7 thousands, and then it's 0.3 thousands,
then it's 0.04 thousands.
I don't know if that helps you.
We can write this as 7.345 times 10 to the third.
Because it's going to be 7 thousands plus 0.3 thousands.
What's 0.3 times 1,000?
0.3 times 1,000 is 300.
What's 0.04 times 1,000?
It's 40.
What's 0.005 times 1,000?
That's a 5.
So 7.345 times 1,000 is equal to 7,345.
Let me multiply it out, just to make it clear.
So if I took 7.345 times 1,000.
The way I do it is, I ignore the 0's.
I essentially multiply 1 times that guy up there.
So I get 7 3 4 5, then I had three 0's here, so
I put those on the end.
And then I have three decimal places.
One, two, three.
So one, two, three, put the decimal right there.
And there you have it.
7.345 times 1,000 is indeed 7,345.
Let's do a couple of them.
Let's say we wanted to write the number 6 in
scientific notation.
Obviously there's no need to write the scientific notation,
but how would you do it?
What's the largest power of 10 that fits into 6?
Well, the largest power of 10 that fits into 6 is just 1.
So we could write it as, something times 10 to the 0.
This is just 1, right?
That's just 1.
So 6 is what times 1?
Well it's just 6.
So 6 is equal to 6 times 10 to the 0.
You wouldn't actually have to write it this way.
This is much simpler.
Now, what if we wanted to represent something like this?
I started off the video saying, science, you deal with very
large and very small numbers.
So let's say you had the number, do it in this color.
Say you have the number 1, and you have 1, 2, 3, 4, and then
let's say five 0's, and you have, followed by a 7.
Once again, this is not an easy number to deal with.
What's the largest power of 10 that fits into this number?
That this number's divisible by?
Let's think about it.
All the powers of 10 we did before were going to
positive, or going to, yeah, positive powers of 10.
We could also do negative powers of 10.
You know that 10 to the 0 is 1.
Let's start there.
10 to the minus 1 is equal to 1 over 10, which is equal to 0.1.
Switch colors, I'll do pink.
10 to the minus 2 is equal to 1 over 10 squared, which is equal
to 1 over 100, which is equal to 0.01 And I think
you get the idea.
Well let me just do one more so that you can get the idea.
10 to the minus 3.
10 to the minus 3 is equal to 1 over 10 to the third, which
is equal to 1 over 1,000, which is equal to 0.001.
So the general pattern here is, 10 to the whatever negative
power is however many places you're going to have
behind the decimal point.
So here, it's not the number of 0'x.
In here, 10 to the minus 3, you only have two 0's, but you have
three places behind the decimal point.
So what is the largest power of 10 that goes into this?
Well how many decimal, places behind the
decimal point do I have?
I have one, two, three, four, five, six.
So 10 to the minus 6 is going to be equal to point, and we're
going to have six places behind the decimal point, and the last
point is going to be, or the last place is going to be a 1.
So you're going to have five 0's and a 1.
That's 10 to the minus 6.
Now this number right here is 7 times this number, right?
If we multiply this times 7, times 7, we get 7 times 1, and
then we have one, two, three, four, five, six numbers
behind the decimal point.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
So this number times 7 is clearly equal to the number
that we started off with.
So we can rewrite this number.
We can rewrite, instead of writing this number every time,
we can write it as being equal to this number, or we could
write it as 7, this is equal to 7 times this number.
But this number's no better than that number, but this
number's the same thing as 10 to the minus 6th.
7 times 10 to the minus 6th.
So now you can imagine.
You know, numbers like, imagine the number, what if we had a 7,
let me think of it this way.
What if we had a 7, say we had a 7 3 over there.
So what would we do?
Well we'd want to go to the first digit right here, because
this is kind of the largest power of 10 that can be,
that can go into this thing right here.
So if we want to represent that thing, let me write, let me do
another decimal that's like that one.
So let's see, I did 0.0000516.
I wanted to represent this in scientific notation.
I'd go to the first non-digit 0, the first non-zero digit,
not non-digit 0, which is there.
And I'm like, OK, what's the largest power of 10 that
will fit into that?
So I'll go one, two, three, four, five, so it's going to be
equal to 5.16, so I take 5 there, and then everything else
is going to be behind the decimal point, times 10, so
this is going to be the largest power of 10 that fits into
this first non-zero number.
So it's one, two, three, four, five, so 10 to
the minus 5 power.
Let me do another example.
So the point I wanted to make is, you just go to the first,
you go to the first, you're starting at the left, the first
non-zero number, that's what you get your power from.
That's where I got my 10 to the minus 5, because I counted
one, two, three, four, five.
You've got to count that number, just like
we did over here.
And then everything else would be behind the decimal.
Let me do another example.
If you had, and my wife always points out that I have to write
a 0 in front of my decimal points, because she's a doctor,
and if people don't see the decimal points, someone might
overdose on some medications.
So let's write it her way.
0.0000000008192.
Clearly this is a super cumbersome number, right?
And you know you might forget about a 0, or add too many 0's,
which could be costly, if you're doing some important
scientific research, or maybe doing, or you wouldn't
prescribe medicine in this small a dose, or maybe you
would, I don't want to get into that.
But how would I write this in scientific notation?
So I start off with the first non-zero number, if I'm
starting from the left.
So it's going to be 8.192, I just put a decimal and write
0.192 times, times 10 of the what?
eight, nine, ten, I have to include that number.
10 to the minus 10.
I think you'll find it reasonably satisfactory that
this number is easier to write than that number over there.
Now, and this is another powerful thing about
scientific notation.
Let's say I have these two numbers and I want
to multiply them.
Let's say I want to multiply the number 0.005 times the
number, times the number 0.0008.
This is actually a fairly straightforward one to do.
But, sometimes they can get quite cumbersome, especially if
you're dealing with twenty or thirty 0's on either sides
of the decimal point.
Put a 0 here to make my wife happy.
Well when you do it in scientific notation, it
will actually simplify it.
This guy can be rewritten as 5 times 10 to the what?
I have one, two, three spaces behind the
decimal, 10 to the third.
And this is 8, so this is times 8 times 10 to the, sorry, this
is 5 times 10 to the minus 3.
That's very important.
5 times 10 to the 3 would've been 5,000.
Be very careful about that.
And what is this guy equal to?
This is one, two, three, four places behind the decimal.
So it's 8 times 10 to the minus 4.
So if we're multiplying numbers, so this is, if we're
multiplying these two things, it's the same thing as 5 times
10 to the minus 3 times 8 times 10 to the minus 4.
There's nothing special about the scientific notation.
It literally means what it's saying.
So for multiplying, you could write it out like this, And
multiplication, order doesn't matter, so I can rewrite this
as 5 times 8 times 10 to the minus 3 times 10
to the minus 4.
And then what is 5 times 8?
5 times 8 we know is 40.
So it's 40 times 10 to the minus 3 times
10 to the minus 4.
And if you know your exponent rules, you know that when you
multiply two numbers that have the same base, you can
just add their exponents.
You can just add the minus 3 and the minus 4.
So it becomes equal to 10 times 10 to the minus 7.
Let's do another example.
Let's say we were to multiply Avogadro's number.
So we know that's 6.022 times 10 to the 23rd.
Let's say we were multiplying that times
some really small number.
So times, let's say it's 7.23 times 10 to the minus 22.
So this is some really small number.
You're going to have a decimal, and then you're going to have
twenty-one 0's then you're going to have a 7
and a 2 and a 3.
So this is a really small number.
But the multiplication, when you do it in scientific
properly, 6.022 times 10 to the 23rd, times 7.23
times 10 to the minus 22.
We can change the order.
So it's equal to 6.022 times 7.23.
That's that part.
So you can do it as these first parts of our
scientific notation.
Times, times, 10 to the twenty-third times 10 to
the minus twenty-two.
And now, this is, you know, you're going to have to
do some little decimal multiplication right here.
It's going to be some number, forty something, I think.
I can't do this one in my head.
here, this will be times, 10 to the 23rd, times 10
to the minus 22.
You just add the exponents.
You get times 10 to the first power times 10.
And then this number, whatever it's going to equal, I'll just
leave it out here since I don't have a calculator.
7.23, let's see what it will be.
7.2, let's see, 0.2 times, it's like 1/5, it'll
be like 41 something.
So this is approximately, approximately, 41
times 10 to the 1.
Or another way, it's approximately, it's a little,
it's going to be 410 something.
And to get it right, you just have to actually perform
this multiplication.
So hopefully you see that scientific notation is one,
really useful for super large and super small numbers.
And not only is it more useful to kind of understand the
numbers, and to write the numbers, but it also simplifies
operating on the numbers.

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