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 place.
To find the number of households that can be served by the power station, we divide the total amount of electricity generated by the power station by the average electricity usage of a household.
Number of households = (Total electricity generated by power station) / (Average electricity usage per household)
Number of households = (2.496 × 10¹⁰ kWh) / (1.04 × 10⁴ kWh)
Simplifying the division of the numbers, we can subtract the exponents:
Number of households = 2.496 / 1.04 × 10¹⁰ / 10⁴ = 2.4 × 10⁶
Therefore, the power station can serve approximately 2.4 × 10⁶ households.
To find out how many households a power station can serve, we can divide the total amount of electricity generated by the power station in a year by the average amount of electricity consumed by a single household in a year.
First, let's convert both numbers to scientific notation to simplify the calculation.
The total electricity generated by the power station: 2.496 × 10¹⁰ kWh
The average electricity consumed by a household: 1.04 × 10⁴ kWh
To divide these two values, we subtract the exponents (10¹⁰ - 10⁴) and divide the coefficients (2.496 / 1.04).
(2.496 × 10¹⁰) / (1.04 × 10⁴) = (2.496 / 1.04) × (10¹⁰ / 10⁴) = 2.4 × 10⁶
Therefore, 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 electricity generated by the power station by the electricity used by an average American household.
Total electricity generated by the power station = 2.496 × 10¹⁰ kWh
Electricity used by an average American household = 1.04 × 10⁴ kWh
To perform the division, we need to subtract the exponents of 10 and divide the coefficients:
(2.496 × 10¹⁰) / (1.04 × 10⁴) = (2.496 / 1.04) × (10¹⁰ / 10⁴) = 2.4 × (10¹⁰-⁴) = 2.4 × 10⁶
Therefore, the power station can serve 2.4 × 10⁶ households.