Scientific notation

Scientific notation (more commonly known as standard form) is a way of writing numbers that are too big or too small to be conveniently written in decimal form. Scientific notation has a number of useful properties and is commonly used in calculators and by scientists, mathematicians and engineers.

In scientific notation all numbers are written in the form of

$a\times 10^{b}$

($a$ times ten raised to the power of $b$), where the exponent $b$ is an integer, and the coefficient $a$ is any real number (however, see normalized notation below), called the significand or mantissa. The term "mantissa" may cause confusion, however, because it can also refer to the fractional part of the common logarithm. If the number is negative then a minus sign precedes a (as in ordinary decimal notation).

Standard decimal notation	Normalized scientific notation
2	2×100
300	3×102
4,321.768	4.321768×103
-53,000	−5.3×104
6,720,000,000	6.72×109
0.2	2×10−1
0.000 000 007 51	7.51×10−9

Decimal floating point is a computer arithmetic system closely related to scientific notation.

Normalized notation

Any given number can be written in the form of a×10^^b in many ways; for example, 350 can be written as 3.5×10² or 35×10¹ or 350×10⁰.

In normalized scientific notation, the exponent b is chosen so that the absolute value of a remains at least one but less than ten (1 ≤ |a| < 10). Following these rules, 350 would always be written as 3.5×10². This form allows easy comparison of two numbers of the same sign in a, as the exponent b gives the number's order of magnitude. In normalized notation, the exponent b is negative for a number with absolute value between 0 and 1 (e.g., negative one half is written as −5×10⁻¹). The 10 and exponent are usually omitted when the exponent is 0. Note that 0 cannot be written in normalized scientific notation since it cannot be expressed as a×10^^b for any non-zero a.

Normalized scientific form is the typical form of expression of large numbers for many fields, except during intermediate calculations or when an unnormalised form, such as engineering notation, is desired. Normalized scientific notation is often called exponential notation—although the latter term is more general and also applies when a is not restricted to the range 1 to 0 (as in engineering notation for instance) and to bases other than 10 (as in 315× 2^²⁰).

Engineering notation

Main article: Engineering notation

Engineering notation differs from normalized scientific notation in that the exponent b is restricted to multiples of 3. Consequently, the absolute value of a is in the range 1 ≤ |a| < 1000, rather than 1 ≤ |a| < 10. Though similar in concept, engineering notation is rarely called scientific notation. This allows the numbers to explicitly match their corresponding SI prefixes, which facilitates reading and oral communication. For example, 12.5×10⁻⁹ m can be read as "twelve-point-five nanometers" or written as 12.5 nm, while its scientific notation counterpart 1.25×10⁻⁸ m would likely be read out as "one-point-two-five times ten-to-the-negative-eight meters".

Significant figures

Main article: Significant figures

A significant figure is a digit in a number that adds to its precision. This includes all nonzero numbers, zeroes between significant digits, and zeroes indicated to be significant. Leading and trailing zeroes are not significant because they exist only to show the scale of the number. Therefore, 1,230,400 has five significant figures—1, 2, 3, 0, and 4; the two zeroes serve only as placeholders and add no precision to the original number.

When a number is converted into normalized scientific notation, it is scaled down to a number between 1 and 10. All of the significant digits remain, but all of the place holding zeroes are incorporated into the exponent. Following these rules, 1,230,400 becomes 1.2304 x 10⁶.

Ambiguity of the last digit

It is customary in scientific measurements to record all the significant digits from the measurements, and to guess one additional digit if there is any information at all available to the observer to make a guess. The resulting number is considered more valuable than it would be without that extra digit, and it is considered a significant digit because it contains some information leading to greater precision in measurements and in aggregations of measurements (adding them or multiplying them together.)

Additional information about precision can be conveyed through additional notations. In some cases, it may be useful to know how exact the final significant digit is. For instance, the accepted value of the unit of elementary charge can properly be expressed as 1.602176487(40)×10⁻¹⁹ C, which is shorthand for (1.602176487±0.000000040)×10⁻¹⁹ C

E notation

A calculator display showing the Avogadro constant in E notation

Most calculators and many computer programs present very large and very small results in scientific notation. Because superscripted exponents like 10⁷ cannot always be conveniently displayed, the letter E or e is often used to represent times ten raised to the power of (which would be written as "x 10^b") and is followed by the value of the exponent. Note that in this usage the character e is not related to the mathematical constant e or the exponential function e^x (a confusion that is less likely with capital E); and though it stands for exponent, the notation is usually referred to as (scientific) E notation or (scientific) e notation, rather than (scientific) exponential notation (though the latter also occurs). The use of this notation is not encouraged by publications.

Examples and other notations

• In the Ada, C++, FORTRAN, MATLAB, Perl, Java and Python programming languages, 6.0221418E23 or 6.0221418e23 is equivalent to 6.0221418×10²³. FORTRAN also uses "D" to signify double precision numbers.
• The ALGOL 60 programming language uses a subscript ten "₁₀" character instead of the letter E, for example: 6.02214151023.
• The ALGOL 68 programming language has the choice of 4 characters: e, E, \, or ₁₀. By examples: 6.0221415e23, 6.0221415E23, 6.0221415\23 or 6.02214151023.

• Decimal Exponent Symbol is part of "The Unicode Standard 6.0" e.g. 6.0221415⏨23 - it was included to accommodate usage in the programming languages Algol 60 and Algol 68.
• The TI-83 series and TI-84 Plus series of calculators use a stylized E character to display decimal exponent and the 10 character to denote an equivalent Operator[7].
• The Simula programming language requires the use of & (or && for long), for example: 6.0221415&23 (or 6.0221415&&23).

Order of magnitude

Main article: Order of magnitude

Scientific notation also enables simpler order-of-magnitude comparisons. A proton's mass is 0.0000000000000000000000000016726 kg. If written as 1.6726×10⁻²⁷ kg, it is easier to compare this mass with that of an electron, given below. The order of magnitude of the ratio of the masses can be obtained by comparing the exponents instead of the more error-prone task of counting the leading zeros. In this case, −27 is larger than −31 and therefore the proton is roughly four orders of magnitude (about 10000 times) more massive than the electron.

Scientific notation also avoids misunderstandings due to regional differences in certain quantifiers, such as billion, which might indicate either 10⁹ or 10¹².

Use of spaces

In normalized scientific notation, in E notation, and in engineering notation, the space (which in typesetting may be represented by a normal width space or a thin space) that is allowed only before and after "×" or in front of "E" or "e" is sometimes omitted, though it is less common to do so before the alphabetical character.

Examples

• An electron's mass is about 0.00000000000000000000000000000091093822 kg. In scientific notation, this is written 9.1093822×10⁻³¹ kg.
• The Earth's mass is about 5973600000000000000000000 kg. In scientific notation, this is written 5.9736×10²⁴ kg.
• The Earth's circumference is approximately 40000000 m. In scientific notation, this is 4×10⁷ m. In engineering notation, this is written 40×10⁶ m. In SI writing style, this may be written "40 Mm" (40 megameters).
• An inch is 25400 micrometers. Describing an inch as 2.5400×10⁴ μm unambiguously states that this conversion is correct to the nearest micrometer. An approximated value with only three significant digits would be 2.54×10⁴ μm instead. In this example, the number of significant zeros is actually infinite (which is not the case with most scientific measurements, which have a limited degree of precision). It can be properly written with the minimum number of significant zeros used with other numbers in the application (no need to have more significant digits that other factors or addends). Or a bar can be written over a single zero, indicating that it repeats forever. The bar symbol is just as valid in scientific notation as it is in decimal notation.

Converting numbers

Converting a number in these cases means to either convert the number into scientific notation form, convert it back into decimal form or to change the exponent part of the equation. None of these alter the actual number, only how it's expressed.

Decimal to scientific

First, move the decimal separator point the required amount, n, to make the number's value within a desired range, between 1 and 10 for normalized notation. If the decimal was moved to the left, append x 10ⁿ; to the right, x 10^-n. To represent the number 1,230,400 in normalized scientific notation, the decimal separator would be moved 6 digits to the left and x 10⁶ appended, resulting in 1.2304×10⁶. The number -0.004 0321 would have its decimal separator shifted 3 digits to the right instead of the left and yield −4.0321×10⁻³ as a result.

Scientific to decimal

Converting a number from scientific notation to decimal notation, first remove the x 10ⁿ on the end, then shift the decimal separator n digits to the right (positive n) or left (negative n). The number 1.2304×10⁶ would have its decimal separator shifted 6 digits to the right and become 1 230 400, while −4.0321×10⁻³ would have its decimal separator moved 3 digits to the left and be -0.0040321.

Exponential

Conversion between different scientific notation representations of the same number with different exponential values is achieved by performing opposite operations of multiplication or division by a power of ten on the significand and an subtraction or addition of one on the exponent part. The decimal separator in the significand is shifted x places to the left (or right) and 1x is added to (subtracted from) the exponent, as shown below.

1.234×10³ = 12.34×10² = 123.4×10¹ = 1234

Basic operations

Given two numbers in scientific notation,

$x_{0}=a_{0}\times 10^{b_{0}}$

and

$x_{1}=a_{1}\times 10^{b_{1}}$

Multiplication and division are performed using the rules for operation with exponential functions:

$x_{0}x_{1}=a_{0}a_{1}\times 10^{b_{0}+b_{1}}$

and

${\frac {x_{0}}{x_{1}}}={\frac {a_{0}}{a_{1}}}\times 10^{b_{0}-b_{1}}$

Some examples are:

$5.67\times 10^{-5}\times 2.34\times 10^{2}\approx 13.3\times 10^{-3}=1.33\times 10^{-2}$

and

${\frac {2.34\times 10^{2}}{5.67\times 10^{-5}}}\approx 0.413\times 10^{7}=4.13\times 10^{6}$

Addition and subtraction require the numbers to be represented using the same exponential part, so that the significand can be simply added or subtracted. :$x_{1}=c\times 10^{b_{0}}$

Next, add or subtract the significands:

$x_{0}\pm x_{1}=(a_{0}\pm c)\times 10^{b_{0}}$

An example:

$2.34\times 10^{-5}+5.67\times 10^{-6}=2.34\times 10^{-5}+0.567\times 10^{-5}\approx 2.907\times 10^{-5}$

Other bases

While base 10 is normally used for scientific notation, powers of other bases can be used too, base 2 being the next most commonly used one.

For example, in base-2 scientific notation, the number 9 (1001 in binary) is written as:

1.125 2³ (using decimal representation), or, in E notation,

1.001 E11 (using binary and with the letter E now standing for times two to the power).

This is closely related to the base-2 floating-point representation commonly used in computer arithmetic.

Engineering notation can be viewed as base-1000 scientific notation.

See also

• Engineering notation
• Binary prefix
• Floating point
• ISO 31-0
• ISO 31-11
• Significant figure
• Scientific pitch notation

External links

• Decimal to Scientific Notation Converter
• Scientific Notation to Decimal Converter
• Scientific Notation in Everyday Life
• An exercise in converting to and from scientific notation