Scientific Notation: You'd Think It Grows on Trees

Today's number is:

3.1 x 10ee12 in scientific notation.

Three-point-one-times-ten-to-the-twelvth-power

In England, they'd call that 3.1 million million.

In US terms, it is 3.1 trillion.

In plain numeric notation, it is $3,100,000,000,000.00

I have to express it in scientific notation just to get a handle on it. Very large numbers are hard to read, so scientists developed a way to deal with them called scientific notation. You count up the number of zeros to the left of the decimal point, and any number but the largest. This makes the exponent. There are twelve places to the left of the decimal point and to the right of the three, so we place the decimal point just to right of the three and then express all those places as an exponent.

Scientific notation is good for very small numbers, too. You just count the places to the right of the decimal point and express those places as a negative decimal.

I wish this number were very small.

It is the proposed amount for the US Federal Budget. With substantial cuts to programming.

Wars are expensive indeed.

Thanks to Judy Aron over at Consent of the Governed for providing the number.

Even politics can be used in the service of teaching math.

Politics is also good for teaching math concepts.