How to Add & Subtract Scientific Notations
Scientific notation is an essential tool for doing calculations using very large numbers. Scientific notation rounds a number to the nearest significant digit, then represents all the zeroes as a power of ten. The coefficient can be any number between -10 and 10, and the exponent can be any value. For example, the number 25,000 in scientific notation is 2.5 * 10^4. Scientific notation not only allows you to easily write large numbers, but to do calculations such as addition and subtraction without writing out very large figures.
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Instructions
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Move the decimal place of one of the coefficients so that both exponents will be the same. Moving the decimal one place to the right lowers the exponent by one, and moving the decimal one place to the left raises the exponent by one. For example, take the problem (3.55 * 10^4) - (2.4 * 10^3). Moving the decimal of the left operand, you get (35.5 * 10^3) - (2.4 * 10^3). Alternatively, you could move the decimal of the right operand, to get (3.55 * 10^4) - (0.24 * 10^4).
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Add or subtract the coefficients, leaving the exponent as is. In the given example, the result is 33.1 * 10^3 if you moved the decimal of the left operand, or 3.31 * 10^4 if you moved the decimal of the right operand.
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Change the exponent and move the decimal to put the answer in correct scientific notation, if necessary. In the example, the result 33.1 * 10^3 should have the decimal moved one place to the left, to get the correctly formatted answer 3.31 * 10^4.
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Add or subtract multiple numbers in scientific notation by first changing all the exponents to the same value and moving the decimal places as necessary, and then doing the arithmetic on the coefficients.
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