AS101 Lecture Notes - Astronomical Unit, Parsec, Scientific Notation
Document Summary
Size of the observable universe: 130,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 km. (1. 3 x 10 to the power of 23) There are a couple of different ways to avoid writing so many zeros: scientific notation, use different units. 10, 100, 1000, etc. are all powers of 10: they can be though of as multiplied by itself some number of times: 100=10x10=10 to the power of 2 (1 with 2 zeros) 1000-10x10x10= 10 to the power of 3 (1 with three zeros) 1,000,000= 10x10x10x10x10x10= 10 to the power of 6 (1 with six zeros) Number of 0 = exponent in this way, 6 million can be written as 6x1,000,000 = 6x10 to the power of. 6,500,000 = 6. 5x10 to the power of 6. 0. 1= 1/10 = 10 to the power of -1. 0. 001 = 1/1000 = 10 to the power of -3. 0. 0065 = 6. 5 x 1/1000 = 6. 5 x 10 to the power of -3. Rules of expressing any number in scientific notation.
