Suppose you are asked to find the area of a rectangle that is 2.1-cm wide by 5.6-cm long. Your calculator answer would be 11.76 cm2. Now suppose you are asked to enter the answer to two significant figures. (Note that if you do not round your answer to two significant figures, your answer will fall outside of the grading tolerance and be graded as incorrect.)
isn't this math?
but the answer is 12 cm^2
and look at similar questions
Sure looks like math to me.
To round the answer to two significant figures, you need to follow a few steps:
Step 1: Identify the significant figures in the original answer. In this case, the original answer is 11.76 cm2, and it has four significant figures.
Step 2: Determine which digits need to be rounded. To round to two significant figures, focus on the first two significant figures from the left.
Step 3: Determine if rounding up or down is necessary. If the third significant figure is 5 or greater, you round up the second significant figure. If the third significant figure is less than 5, you keep the second significant figure the same.
In this case, the third significant figure is 6, which is greater than 5. Therefore, we round up the second significant figure.
Step 4: Round the number accordingly. The second significant figure is 1, which rounds up to 2.
Therefore, the final answer, rounded to two significant figures, is 12 cm2.