Scientific Notation

Scientific notation (also known as standard form) is a way of writing numbers that accommodates values that are too large or small to be written in standard decimal notation and writing them in simpler form, such as 1,000,000 or 0.000001.

1,000,000 in scientific notation is 1.0 * 106.

The first part of scientific notation is the first number in the original number. In 382,400 it is the 3, in 4200 it is the 4 and so on.

The second part is a decimal. You turn all non zero numbers after the first into a decimal. 382400 becomes 3.824 * 105 

Finally you multiply the first two parts by 10 to what ever power of digits you have after the first number. In 4000 it's 103, in 300,000 it's 105

130,000 in scientific notation is 1.3*105. 1 is the first number, 3 is the only significant digit, and 5 is the number of digits after the first.

Another way to find the power is to move the decimal place over that many places to the right to get to the original number.

In 1.43*104. Move the decimal place over 4 spaces and fill the empty places with zeros to make 14300.

Decimals are a little harder. To find them you need the same thing you normally need. Only your first number is the first nonzero closest to the decimal point. And your other numbers are non zero number to the right. So, 0.0000865 becomes 8.65 * 10-5.