scientific notation helps make very large or very small numbers easier. for very large numbers you move the decimal place as many spaces to the left to leave you with one # on the left. you then take the # of spaces you moved and times it by 10^that number. You do the same for numbers less than one except the exponent will be -the number of spaces you moved your decimal.
so .00003165 is moved 5 places to make 3.165
its a number less than 1 it is times 10^-5
