Question

How many times larger is 2 x 10^12 than 5 × 10^6

Answer 1

`4*10^5`

Explanation:

So whenever sometimes says "how many is x larger than y", it just means what is x divided by y. For example 4 is 2 times as much as 2 because 4/2 = 2

With this being said we can simply divide two numbers

`(2*10^(12))/(5*10^6)`

Whenever you divide scientific notation you simply divide the two coefficients and subtract the exponents from the base 10

So:
`(2*10^(12))/(5*10^6) =(2)/(5) * 10^(12-6)`

This gives you a result of:
`0.4 * 10^6`

Since we want the coefficient to be:
`1\le c < 10` we can take one of the 10s from the base, since 10^6 is just 6 tens being multiplied by each other and we can "borrow" one of them to get:
`0.4*10^6=0.4*10*10^5` which simplifies to:
`4*10^5`