An average American household uses about
1.04 × 10⁴ kWh (kilowatt hours) of electricity a year. If a power station generates 2.496 × 10¹⁰ kWh per year, how many households can it serve? Write your answer in scientific notation, expressed to the exact decimal
To find out how many households can be served by the power station, we need to divide the total electricity generated by the power station by the electricity used by an average household.
Total electricity generated by the power station = 2.496 × 10¹⁰ kWh
Electricity used by an average household = 1.04 × 10⁴ kWh
To divide these two values, we subtract the exponents of 10 and divide the coefficients:
(2.496 × 10¹⁰) / (1.04 × 10⁴) = (2.496 / 1.04) × 10¹⁰-⁴ = 2.4 × 10⁶
Therefore, the power station can serve 2.4 × 10⁶ households.
To find out how many households a power station can serve, we need to divide the total electricity generated by the power station by the average electricity usage per household.
Total electricity generated by the power station: 2.496 × 10¹⁰ kWh
Average electricity usage per household: 1.04 × 10⁴ kWh
To perform the division, we need to subtract the exponents and divide the coefficients:
(2.496 × 10¹⁰) / (1.04 × 10⁴)
Dividing the coefficients gives us: 2.496 / 1.04 = 2.4
Subtracting the exponents gives us: 10¹⁰ - 10⁴ = 10⁶
Putting it all together, the power station can serve approximately 2.4 × 10⁶ households.
To find out how many households a power station can serve, we need to divide the total amount of electricity generated by the power station by the average amount of electricity used by each household.
The total electricity generated by the power station is given as 2.496 × 10¹⁰ kWh per year.
The average electricity used by an American household is given as 1.04 × 10⁴ kWh per year.
To divide these two numbers, we can subtract the exponents of 10 and divide the coefficients:
(2.496 × 10¹⁰) / (1.04 × 10⁴)
Dividing the coefficients, we get:
2.496 / 1.04 = 2.4
Subtracting the exponents, we get:
10¹⁰ / 10⁴ = 10⁶
Combining these results, we find that the power station can serve approximately 2.4 × 10⁶ households.