Question

How do you write $0.5$ in scientific notation?

Answer 1

Hint: Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too large to be conveniently written in decimal form.
Scientific notation is written in $m \times {10^n}$ , where m is the coefficient which is a non- zero real number and n is the power to which ten is raised to that power.
Using the above definition and form of the scientific notation we will 0.5 in scientific notation.

Complete step-by-step solution:
Let’s discuss scientific notation in much more detail.
Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too large or too small to be expressed in decimal form. It may be referred to as scientific form or standard index form. This base ten notations is commonly used by scientists, mathematicians and engineers, in part because it can simplify certain arithmetic operations.
The scientific notation is written as;
$m \times {10^n}$
In the term written above, n is the exponent and m is called significant or mantissa; m and n are the integers, therefore could be written with negative sign as well.
Thus, we can write, $0.5$ as;
$ \Rightarrow 0.5 \times \dfrac{{10}}{{10}}$ (We have multiplied and divided by 10 in order to remove the decimal form 5)
$ \Rightarrow \dfrac{5}{{10}}$ (When 10 is multiplied with 5 its power or the exponent becomes negative)
$ \Rightarrow 5 \times {10^{ - 1}}$

$5 \times {10^{ - 1}}$ is the required answer.

Note: Scientific notation is used to write very large or very small numbers using fewer digits. Scientists use scientific notation for representing distance between the planets, astronomical distances or the microscopic distances such as the length of a blood cell. Many engineers use the scientific notation for representing very small current, units of capacitors and many other formulas to ease the lengthy and long written values.