Question

Students sometimes get confused between the terms "scientific notation" and "significant figures." Figure out a way that will ensure you don't get confused between the two. Describe your method without plagiarism below. (HINT: define notation, define significant).

Answer 1

ANSWER and EXPLANATION

We want to describe the differences between scientific notation and significant figures.

When expressing small or large numbers as a power of 10, an easy way to do this is scientific notation. This is because it eliminates the need to write down a significant amount of zeros.

For example, to write 10,000,000 in scientific notation, we could simply write:

`10,000,000=10*10^7`

Scientific notation makes writing large numbers quicker, easier and more readable, and neater.

Physics, as we know, is based on measurements. However, there is always an unavoidable uncertainty when a quantity is measured, for several reasons. This uncertainty can be easily indicated through the use of significant figures.

For example, if a measurement is made and the measured value is 14.5603, we can write this in 4 significant figures as follows:

`14.5603\approx14.56`

So, we see that in scientific notation, a number is expressed as a power of 10, while for significant figures, we deal with the determination of accurately known digits.