At the end of fiscal year 2004, the federal debt of Country C is $278,560,125,000. What is the closest estimation of this amount? Express your answer in the form of a single digit times an integer power of 10.
3x10 Exponent = 11
2x 10 Exponent = 11
2.79x 10 Exponent = 11
3x10 Exponent = -11
The closest estimation of the federal debt of Country C at the end of fiscal year 2004 is $2.79x10^11.
To express the federal debt of Country C at the end of fiscal year 2004 in the form of a single digit times an integer power of 10, we need to move the decimal point until we have a number between 1 and 10, and then count the number of decimal places the decimal point moved.
The federal debt is $278,560,125,000.
To move the decimal point until we have a number between 1 and 10, we can divide the debt by 10 repeatedly until we reach that range.
278,560,125,000 ÷ 10 = 27,856,012,500 (1 decimal place shift)
27,856,012,500 ÷ 10 = 2,785,601,250 (2 decimal places shift)
2,785,601,250 ÷ 10 = 278,560,125 (3 decimal places shift)
278,560,125 ÷ 10 = 27,856,012.5 (4 decimal places shift)
Therefore, the closest estimation of the federal debt of Country C at the end of fiscal year 2004 is 2.79 x 10^11.
To estimate the amount of the federal debt of Country C at the end of fiscal year 2004, we will convert the given amount into scientific notation. Scientific notation expresses a number as a product of a single digit and an integer power of 10.
In this case, the federal debt is $278,560,125,000. To convert this into scientific notation, we need to move the decimal point eleven places to the left until we have a number between 1 and 10.
Moving the decimal point 11 places to the left gives us 2.78560125. Now, since we moved the decimal point to the left, the exponent will be positive, indicating the number of places the decimal point was moved. In this case, the decimal point was moved 11 places to the left, so the exponent is 11.
Therefore, the closest estimation of the federal debt of Country C at the end of fiscal year 2004 in scientific notation is 2.79 x 10^11.