Mercury is 5.8×10^7 km from the sun. Neptune is 4.5×10^10 km from the sun. How much further is Neptune from the sun than Mercury?
checkmy answer:
Subtract the distances by getting the same power of 10: (4.5×10^10)−(5.8×10^7) =(4.5×10^10)−(0.0058×10^10)=4.49×10^10 km
Your answer is almost correct. However, when subtracting the distances, you don't need to convert the second term to have the same power of 10.
Instead, you can simply subtract the numbers in the scientific notation form directly:
(4.5×10^10) - (5.8×10^7) = 4.5×10^10 - 5.8×10^7 = 4.49942×10^10 km
Therefore, the correct answer is 4.49942×10^10 km.