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Scientific Notation 1 - expressing numbers in scientific notation

Scientific Notation 2 - multiplying powers of 10

Scientific Notation 3 - multiplying numbers using scientific notation 

Scientific Notation 4 - dividing powers of ten

Scientific Notation 5 - dividing numbers using scientific notation

Scientific notation also helps you keep track of really small numbers..

Suppose you want to figure out the weight of the bacteria in Lake Michigan.

You know there are 1732000 bacteria/liter

and each bacterium's weight is 0.000000000000665 grams

It's just a simple little multiplication problem, right? Except all those darn zeroes are there again ...

Scientific notation will count them too.

Whenever you divide a number by 10, you move the decimal point to the left, correct?

2 /10 = 0.2

2/100 = .002

Scientific notation just tells you how many times you divided a number by 10 - that is, it counts the number of spaces to the left that you've moved the decimal point. They're written as negative numbers.

2/10 = 0.2 = 2 x 10^-1

2/100 = 0.02 = 2 x 10^-2

So, what about those 0.000000000000665 grams per bacterium? How would you write that in scientific notation? After you've tried it, put your cursor in the black box below to see the answer.

When you've finished this tutorial, you'll be able to convert large and small numbers to scientific notation, multiply and divide them, and generally cope with any number of zeroes.

Just choose your tutorial from the list at the left. Each tutorial will create as many questions as you want, and show you the correct answers in the box below. You'll know you've mastered it when you get ten right in a row -- have fun!