Question

0.00341 x 10^4 in Scientific Notation: Is it 3.41 x 10^1 or 3.41 x 10^-1 and why?

a) 3.41 x 10^1 because you move the decimal point one place to the right.
b) 3.41 x 10^-1 because you move the decimal point three places to the left.
c) 3.41 x 10^4 because you move the decimal point four places to the right.
d) 3.41 x 10^-4 because you move the decimal point four places to the left.

Answer 1

0.00341 x 10^4 in scientific notation is 3.41 x 10^1 because the decimal point is moved three places to the right, creating the coefficient 3.41, and reducing the exponent from 4 to 1.

Step-by-step explanation:

The expression 0.00341 x 10^4 in scientific notation is 3.41 x 10^1. This is because you need to move the decimal point to the right until you have a number between 1 and 10, which in this case is exactly three places to transform 0.00341 into 3.41. Since we moved the decimal three places to the right, we subtract 3 from the exponent 4, resulting in 10^1 (4 - 3 = 1).

In other words, to convert a number to scientific notation, count the number of places the decimal point is moved to obtain a coefficient between 1 and 10. For a positive power, move the decimal to the left, and for a negative power, move it to the right. The number of places moved will be the exponent of 10. Here, since the decimal is moved to the right (and the original number is smaller than 1), the exponent decreases.