Scientific notation is a way of writing numbers that are very large or very small in a more compact form. It involves representing a number as a product of a decimal number between 1 and 10 and a power of 10.
To convert a number into scientific notation, move the decimal point to the right or left until there is only one non-zero digit to the left of the decimal point. This new number will be the decimal number in scientific notation, and the number of places you moved the decimal point will be the exponent.
Using scientific notation allows us to express numbers that are too large or too small to be easily written or understood in standard decimal notation. It also makes it easier to perform calculations and compare numbers with different magnitudes.
To perform operations with numbers in scientific notation, you must first convert both numbers into the same power of 10. Then, you can add, subtract, multiply, or divide the decimal numbers, and use the same power of 10 as the final answer's exponent.
The exponent in scientific notation represents the number of times the decimal point was moved to the left or right to get the new number. Since moving the decimal point always involves multiplying or dividing by powers of 10, the exponent will always be a whole number in scientific notation.