Question

How do you write 0.000938 in scientific notation?

Answer 1

Hint: To write 0.000938 in scientific notation, we have to represent it in the form $N\times {{10}^{m}}$ , where N is a number between 1 and 10, excluding 10 and m is any integer. We have to move the decimal point to the right of the first number. The number of places moved will be negative m. If we move a number to the left, then m will be positive.

Complete step by step solution:
We have to write 0.000938 in scientific notation. Let us first see how to write a number in scientific notation. The general form of scientific notation is given as $N\times {{10}^{m}}$ , where N is a number between 1 and 10, excluding 10 and m is any integer.
 We are given 0.000938. To write this number in scientific notation, we have to move the decimal point to the right of the first number, that is, to the right of 9. The number of places moved will be negative m, which is the power of 10. So we have to move 4 places to the right. Hence, the power of 10, that is, m will be -4.
\[0.000938=9.38\times {{10}^{-4}}\]
Hence, the scientific notation of 0.000938 is \[9.38\times {{10}^{-4}}\] .

Note: Students may confuse scientific notation and standard notation. 0.000938 is the standard notation while \[9.38\times {{10}^{-4}}\] is scientific notation. You cannot represent this number in scientific notation as \[93.8\times {{10}^{-5}}\] . If we are given a number 462.236, we can represent it in scientific notation by moving the decimal places to the left and m will be the number of decimal places moved, that is, m will be positive. Hence, its scientific notation will be \[4.62236\times {{10}^{2}}\] .