Scientific notation is most effective when used with _____
a. very small numbers
b. very large numbers
c. imaginary numbers
d. very large and very small numbers
D or B
Yes. It's either B or D. Check this site to see which answer is correct.
http://serc.carleton.edu/quantskills/methods/quantlit/BigNumbers.html
The correct answer is D or B. Scientific notation is most effective when used with very large and very small numbers. Scientific notation is a way of representing numbers that are either very large or very small in a concise and standardized form. It involves expressing a number as the product of a coefficient and a power of 10. By using scientific notation, we can easily express and manipulate numbers that have a large number of zeros or decimal places.
To express a number in scientific notation, follow these steps:
1. Determine the coefficient: This is a number between 1 and 10 (inclusive) that you obtain by moving the decimal point in the original number to the left or right.
2. Determine the exponent: Count the number of times you moved the decimal point and assign it as the exponent of 10. If you moved the decimal point to the left, the exponent will be positive; if you moved it to the right, the exponent will be negative.
For example, the number 3,000,000 can be expressed in scientific notation as 3 x 10^6. Here, the coefficient is 3 (moving the decimal point 6 places to the left) and the exponent is 6. Similarly, the number 0.000052 can be expressed as 5.2 x 10^-5. In this case, the coefficient is 5.2 (moving the decimal point 5 places to the right) and the exponent is -5.
Using scientific notation helps in performing calculations and comparisons with large or small numbers since it simplifies the representation of these numbers. It is a widely used notation in scientific and engineering domains.