Why Is Weight Expressed in Scientific Notation in Physics Problems?

[YayPhysics]

Hey,
I'm taking physics as a learn-at-home kinda course to get into school for electrical. I had a question about some of the logic and reason behind what the book is showing me as it doesn't explain much. The example question they gave is as follows:

Determine the weight of a 65kg student on earth( g= 9.8m/s² [down]).

Given - g= 9.8m/s² [down]
m = 65kg

Required - Fg=?

Equation - Fg = mg

Solution - Fg = (65kg)(9.8ms²)
Fg = 637N
Fg = 6.4 x 10²N

More or less I wanted to know why the 637N was broken up to 6.4 x 10² and how I would go about extrapolating this from every question I come across from now on.

Any info is appreciated, I am new to physics and suck at math in general...

p.s. the g's in the equation should have an arrow pointing to the right over them but I have no clue how to write that on this thing...

Thanks!

 

[DV10]

Its just a convention man..more applicable for bigger numbers...like you can write 10000000 or 10^7 they would mean the same thing...its just for the ease of writing

 

[Doc Al]

More or less I wanted to know why the 637N was broken up to 6.4 x 10² and how I would go about extrapolating this from every question I come across from now on.

They are just expressing the weight using scientific or exponential notation. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_notation" ) Note that they rounded off the answer to 2 significant figures instead of 3, which is more realistic since you only have the mass to 2 significant figures.

p.s. the g's in the equation should have an arrow pointing to the right over them but I have no clue how to write that on this thing...

While the acceleration is a vector, which you could express using that arrow notation, g itself is just the quantity 9.8 m/s^2.