Question

Kyle says 20x10^4 is the same as 20000. He reasoned that since he saw 4 as the exponent he should write 4 zeros in his answer. Is Kyle correct?

Doing My Homework

Answer 1

Consider the expression
`20 * 10^4`.

Kyle solved this expression and got the answer as 20,000. He reasoned that since he saw 4 as the exponent, so he wrote 4 zeros in his answer. Kyle is incorrect.

Consider the expression
`10^4`, since there is 4 in the exponent. So, we can write 4 zeros in the answer.

So,
`10^4 = 10,000`

Now,
`20 * 10^4 = 20 * 10,000`

=
`200,000`

Therefore,
`200,000` is the correct answer.

Therefore, Kyle is not correct.