Identify basic form: Identify the basic form of scientific notation.Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too large or too small to be conveniently written in decimal form. It is typically written in the form of a product of a number between 1 and 10 and a power of 10.
Determine coefficient: Determine the coefficient for scientific notation.To convert 40,000 into scientific notation, we need to express it as a number between 1 and 10 multiplied by a power of 10. We do this by moving the decimal point to the left until we have a number between 1 and 10. For 40,000, the decimal point is moved 4 places to the left to get 4.
Determine power: Determine the power of 10. Since we moved the decimal point 4 places to the left, the power of 10 must be 10 to the power of 4. This is because each move of the decimal point to the left increases the power of 10 by one.
Write in scientific notation: Write the number in scientific notation.Combining the coefficient from Step 2 and the power of 10 from Step 3, we write 40,000 as 4×104 in scientific notation.
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