Final answer:
Scientific notation is used to succinctly express very large or very small numbers using a coefficient and a power of ten, making calculations with such numbers more manageable.
Step-by-step explanation:
The system that allows us to express a very small or very large number in a compact form is called scientific notation. Scientific notation uses a coefficient—a number between 1 and 10—and a power of ten to simplify the expression of extensive numbers. For instance, the distance from Earth to the Sun can be written as 1.5 × 1011 meters, with 1.5 being the coefficient and 11 the exponent indicating the power of 10.
This notation is particularly useful in fields like chemistry and physics where one often deals with numbers that have either many zeros after them or many decimal places before them, such as the mass of a hydrogen atom or astronomical distances.