![]() The process of entering the value 45E9 would be depressing the keys 4 5 EE 9.įor fractional values, the exponent is negative and may be thought of in terms how many places the decimal point must be moved to the right. On most scientific calculators E is represented by either an “EE” or “EXP” button. Thus, 45E9 is proper engineering notation but 4.5E10 isn’t. The only difference between scientific notation and engineering notation is that for engineering notation the exponent is always a multiple of three. Note that it would also be possible to write this number as 4.5E10 or even 0.45E11. Spelling this out is awkward, so a shorthand method is used where “times 10 to the X power” is replaced by the letter E (which stands for exponent). The exponent may be thought of in terms of how places the decimal point is moved to the left. For example, the value 23,000 could be written as 23 times 10 to the 3rd power (that is, times one thousand). The number is split into two portions: a precision part (the mantissa) and a magnitude part (the exponent, being a power of ten). ![]() ![]() Scientific notation is more compact and less error prone method of representation. The ordinary practice of using commas and leading zeroes proves to be very cumbersome in this situation. Scientists and engineers often work with very large and very small numbers. ![]()
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