Scientific notation (also referred to as scientific form or standard index form, or standard form in the UK) is a way of expressing numbers that are too big or too small to be conveniently written in decimal form. It is commonly used by scientists, mathematicians and engineers, in part because it can simplify certain arithmetic operations. On scientific calculators it is usually known as "SCI" display mode.
Decimal notation Scientific notation 2= 2×10^0 300= 3×10^2 4,321.768= 4.321768×10^3 −53,000= −5.3×10^4 6,720,000,000= 6.72×10^9 0.2= 2×10^−1 0.000 000 007 51= 7.51×10^−9
In scientific notation all numbers are written in the form m × 10n
(m times ten raised to the power of n), where the exponent n is an integer, and the coefficient m is any real number, called the significand or mantissa.[1] However, the term "mantissa" may cause confusion because it is the name of the fractional part of the common logarithm. If the number is negative then a minus sign precedes m (as in ordinary decimal notation). In normalized notation, the exponent is chosen so that the absolute value of the coefficient is at least one but less than ten.
Decimal floating point is a computer arithmetic system closely related to scientific notation.
This Readme's Text Source: Wikipedia