scientific notation

American  

noun

1. a method for expressing a given quantity as a number having significant digits necessary for a specified degree of accuracy, multiplied by 10 to the appropriate power, as 1385.62 written as 1.386 × 10 3 .

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scientific notation Scientific  

1. A method of expressing numbers in terms of a decimal number between 1 and 10 multiplied by a power of 10. The scientific notation for 10,492, for example, is 1.0492 × 10 ⁴.

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Etymology

Origin of scientific notation

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

“Atto” is the scientific notation prefix that represents 10-18, which is a decimal point followed by 17 zeroes and a 1.

From Salon • Oct. 10, 2023

TRY IT : : 5.44 Write in scientific notation: ⓐ 48,300 ⓑ 0.0129.

From Textbooks • May 6, 2020

This will give you good practice with scientific notation, since the numbers involved are very large!

From Textbooks • Oct. 13, 2016

Another way to look at scientific notation is that we separate out the messy numbers out front, and leave the smooth units of ten for the exponent to denote.

From Textbooks • Oct. 13, 2016

For very big or very small numbers, so-called scientific notation is often clearer and easier to work with than standard notation and I’ll therefore sometimes use it.

From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos