Standard Form

Standard Form

Standard form writes very large or very small numbers as a × 10ⁿ, where a is at least 1 but less than 10 (1 ≤ a < 10). It's how scientists and engineers write awkward numbers like the distance to the sun without writing out every zero.

Writing large numbers

45,000,000 becomes 4.5 × 10⁷ — count how many places the decimal point moves to get 4.5 from 45,000,000 (7 places), and that's the power.

Writing small numbers

0.00032 becomes 3.2 × 10⁻⁴ — the power is negative because the number is smaller than 1.

Practice

Write 6,200,000 in standard form.