How does 290,000,000 in scientific notation equal 2.9 x 10^8
To convert 290,000,000 to scientific notation, we first need to move the decimal point to the left until there is only one non-zero digit to the left of the decimal point. In this case, we need to move the decimal point 8 places to the left, resulting in:
2.90000000 x 10^8
Since trailing zeros are not significant in scientific notation, we can write this as:
2.9 x 10^8