In science, we often have to deal with numbers that are very small or very large. For example, the average distance between the Earth and the Sun is 149,000,000,000 meters. Now we could abbreviate this as "one hundred forty-nine billion meters."
However, these labels can be confusing; for example, when the British say "billion," they mean a million million (12 zeroes) not a thousand million (nine zeroes) as Americans do! And how do you deal with a small number like 0.0000004 meters, the average distance betwen the peaks of a blue light wave? "Four ten-millionths" can be a mouthful!
Doing math with really large or really small numbers can be difficult. This is why the system of scientific notation was invented. This tutorial is desgned to help you become familiar with scientific notation and how to do math with numbers in scientific notation. Please take the "pre-test" first, to see if you really need to go through the tutorial. Then, if you've missed any of the pre-test problems, move on to the tutorial.
Questions? Ask the designer, Jim Heath
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