Question

In 20 seconds of freefall, an object will travel approximately 1.96 kilometers. What is this value expressed in centimeters, and written in scientific notation?

Answer 1

We want to convert 1.96 km to centimeter. Recall,

1 km = 100000 cm

Thus,

1.96 km = 1.96 x 100000

To write 1.96 x 100000 km inscientific notation, we would count the number of zeros. In this case, it is 5. We would raise 10 to the power of 5. Thus, the value in scientific notation is

1.96 x 10^5