A system of symbols used to represent special things. 
Scientific notation is, essentially, a method for writing really big or really small numbers. It is called scientific notation because these huge numbers are often found in scientific work, like the size of an atom or the mass of the earth. To convert a number to scientific notation, move the decimal point right or left to make the number greater than or equal to one but less than ten, and record the number of po … sitions moved as a power of 10 - the exponent. That is, if the decimal point moves to the left by n positions, then the exponent is 10n. The number 123000000 in scientific notation is written as: 1.23 x 108 The first number 1.23 is called the coefficient. It is always a single digit followed by a decimal point and then the rest, but usually only two digits. The second number is called the base and in scientific notation must always be 10. As you can see, the exponent of 10 is the number of places the decimal point must be shifted to give the number in long form. A positive exponent shows that the decimal point is shifted that number of places to the right. A negative exponent shows that the decimal point is shifted that number of places to the left. In scientific notation, the digit term indicates the number of significant figures in the number. The exponential term only places the decimal point. Scientific Notation (also called Standard Form in Britain) is a special way of writing numbers: It makes it easy to use big and small values. Instead, scientific notation allows us to multiply 5 * 10^7 times 3 *10^6. You multiply the 5 and the 3 to get 15, and then add the exponents on the 10’s. The answer is 15*10^13. However, in order for scientific notation to be completely correct, the number at the beginning must be between 1 and 10. A system of symbols used to represent special things. Example: In mathematical notation ∞ means infinity. 6.00 x 10^4. 3.25 x 10^-2. As you can see from these examples, the construction of a number written in scientific notation includes two parts: a decimal component with a value between 1 (also called 'unity') and 10, and an exponential component, which is 10 taken to an appropriate power or exponent.
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