what is a scientific notation#?

[hisham]

what is a scientific notation

 

[Gord Dibben]

The Scientific format displays a number in exponential notation, replacing
part of the number with E+n, where E (which stands for Exponent) multiplies
the preceding number by 10 to the nth power. For example, a 2-decimal
Scientific format displays 12345678901 as 1.23E+10, which is 1.23 times 10
to the 10th power.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

 

[Jim Thomlinson]

Scientific notation is generally used for very large or very small number. In
Physics an electron volt is
0.00000000000000000016 Volts
there are 18 zeros in that number. For ease of writing it is expresses in
scientific notation as

1.6 E -19

or 1.6 times 10 raised to the poser of -19

This is especailly important in computers as your computer can only express
15 siginificant digits. Without scientinfic notaiton that means that it would
get to the 15th zero and then truncate the rest of the number to 0 and the
value would be 0.

 

[trip_to_tokyo]

Check this out:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_notation

 

[Joe User]

what is a scientific notation

In Excel, you can represent any number that way by selecting the Scientific
format with some number of decimal places.

By default, Excel will represent the number in the form x.yyyE+zz, where the
number of "y" digits depends on the format.

xE+zz means x times 10 to the z power. For example, 2E+6 is 2,000,000. And
2E-6 is 0.000002.

Scientific notation has many purposes. Typically, it is used to express
very large and very small numbers in a concise manner. But it can also be
used, for example, when you want to express all numbers in a consistent way
(e.g. the same number of digits) regardless of their magnitude.