Final answer:
The correct answer is C. 1; the right; 200,000. To find 20 x 10⁴, we multiply 20 by 10,000, which involves moving the decimal point four places to the right, resulting in the number 200,000.
Step-by-step explanation:
To find 20x10⁴, we consider what the multiplication by a power of ten entails. In this case, we are looking at 10⁴, which means the number 10 raised to the fourth power. When we write out 10⁴, it is expressed as 10,000, with four zeros. Multiplication by a power of ten can be handled by moving the decimal point to the right for positive exponents and to the left for negative exponents.
The number 20 can be thought of as 20.0, with the decimal point at the end. To multiply 20 by 10⁴, we simply move the decimal point four places to the right. Doing so doesn't involve removing any zero from the original number but adds zeroes instead to the end of the number. Therefore, 20x10⁴ becomes 20 followed by four zeros, which is 200,000.
However, if the question meant to imply moving zeros to simplify the expression, it looks like this: 20 (with one zero) times 10⁴ (with four zeros) has a total of five zeros. To find the product in the simplest form, we would not remove any zeros but rather combine them.
Therefore, the correct choice matching the described process is:
C. 1; the right; 200,000.
This is because to find the product of 20 and 10⁴ in a manner such that the number 20 maintains its value while being multiplied by a power of ten, we essentially just need to add the zeros from the power of ten to the end of 20.